


Freediver

by winterwhite



Series: Elemental Forces [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Withdrawal, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Suicidal Thoughts, oceanographical nerdery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:59:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 65,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7950763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwhite/pseuds/winterwhite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They strive from crowded deeps, and hope for the surface. </p>
<p>Underwater, it is hard to find the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hypoxia

**Author's Note:**

> My novel is on my laptop. So is a virus. I don't much like cliffhangers, either. So let's see if I can do this right. 
> 
> Please regard warning tags! I marked this mature, I meant it. I marked "referenced rape." No, it's not graphic; yes, it is potentially quite disturbing. While I draw with a light hand... the lines are going to be there, and sometimes keeping it unseen makes it worse. I also cannot direct readers through "safe" chapters and get a coherent story. Bad things will be done, they will leave echoes, and the aftermath will be discussed. This goes much further into shadow than "Stormchaser." Please be prepared, thank you. 
> 
> (Yes, I could be overselling that, depending on reader tolerance. Better over than under.) 
> 
> Not sure, after reading all that? I think you'll know by the end of the first chapter if you want to stay on this ride or not.
> 
> If you're the kind of reader that likes knowing this thing, I had "Bottom of the River" by Delta Rae on repeat.

The moonlight filters into the room, climbing over his bare feet and up his ankles. He does not notice it, or the beauty of the night. For the thousandth time since he saw that armored shape moving in the shadows, he is running through it again.  

What is he supposed to do with this fierce ghost, a stranger now, more dangerous than ever before, back from the dead?

He'd only done what he had to, always reacting. There had been nothing else. He'd looked down other paths, he'd found them dead ends, or closed, leading somewhere away from what he knew was right. He can almost see the ghost dancing past the edges, even now.

Why could he not have peace? He'd lost everything. He'd danced the steps, made the rituals, given the respect; and for nothing. Everything he'd tended, fostered, guided was in ruins. Everything he'd claimed and called his own. Even the name he'd built up for himself.

And somewhere out there, the shape glided, armored and armed, set on plans of his own. Moving further away from any bonds they'd had. Alien, on his own agenda.

He glances down. In his fingers, the blade glints.

**

At the same moment, the sun is sinking. He holds up the bottle. If he wants to escape into it, he can. Nothing stops him but the duties of the next day.

_Was there no other way?_ he wonders. _Why did I draw my weapon? Why didn't I wait, just another moment, to see if he would relent? Maybe he could have backed down, just enough._   

Guilt is heavy in his gut.

_We were making our worst decisions. We were at our worst. He was my brother. I killed him. He took away my name, my honor, my family... and what did I do? Why did I take so much on myself? Why didn't I refuse some of the advice I was given? Why didn't I remember who I was dealing with? I knew him so well, then._

_He's still out there. He was just waiting for me to look alive again. He's just waiting for me to move. It's all on me, and I don't even know where to start. I don't know who he is now. Is there even a point to remembering him?_

The bottle glitters in the light. 

**

At the same moment, no light falls on him. He rests in complete darkness, breathing quietly. He has been forgiven. He doesn't understand this; it was spoken gravely, once, after he thought he was going to die. There was an offer, afterward, an invitation gently extended. He was glad to take it. And now he will redeem himself. Now he will prove he is better than the disrespect, the seething voices he listened to.

He knows he has been maneuvered to this point, surprised and harried to it, attacked and beaten. He accepts that. It had to be like this; it's his own fault, his own pride. He's apologized a thousand times. He will apologize a thousand more.

His shoulder burns. He accepts it. It is as he deserves.   

**

Hanzo Shimada throws the blade into the well. _Nonsense. I will never yield to such weakness._

**

Jack Morrison smashes the bottle into the ground. _Fuck this! I'm going to bed._

**

Jesse McCree starts to shiver. Reaper likes his skin, so he's naked, just now. The ridges and edges under him are uncomfortable, but he's learned to accept them. Reaper is not comfortable outside his armor. Especially not when he's further away from... doing what he has to do, and his skin is becoming speckled with dots of jet, past even the deepest natural color healthy skin can acquire.  Jesse thinks he's probably there, it's been a while since Reaper left him. He hopes he'll go fix it before it gets worse. Jesse tries to be strong, he tries to be brave, but feeling Reaper's flesh shifting under his skin, like a beanbag, is eerie and disturbing.

Reaper's gloved hand runs into his hair. He throws his coat over them. The shivering eases. Jesse relaxes into the armor beneath him. He wishes he could touch more, but Reaper has told him he lacks the aptitude to reconnect his arm; Jesse will just have to wait. In the meantime, sometimes he has phantom pain in one shoulder as his brain tries to figure out where his arm went.

Reaper's fingers have gone still on his scalp. Jesse works his toes into the top of Reaper's boot to rub his calf, just snagging his attention for another moment more. Reaper makes a soft, amused sound, and adjusts Jesse so his head fits between Reaper's collarbones and the underside of his mask.

Jesse doesn't think Reaper can ever sleep, just one more thing he's lost. But sometimes, when the drugs he has chosen are sending Jesse out of his skin, he will let Jesse sleep like this. _Thanks, boss._

**

Each of them is drowning. 


	2. Undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A successful rescue is marked by coordination.

Hanzo is ready for the shot.

It's been a long, slow climb to... better. It's been hard to find a purpose. It's been hard to put the sake down and reclaim his body, his concentration. He feels as if he has fallen into a mirror. His family is gone, destroyed by his family. He attacked his brother in the name of his family; his brother attacked the family. What does he even call that? How does he arrange that in his mind? Dragon turned on dragon; dragons dancing, refusing to fight as their human counterparts battled; a mirror? All these things, jumbled so closely he can't pick them apart.

With his new purpose comes a new problem. When he moves, he is dogged by someone pretending to be him, implicating him in their actions. He cannot tell who. He cannot tell why. He is going from job to job harried and troubled. This one, he believes in: kill a crooked politician, and watch a better one take power. They are both meeting at a late-night event. Hanzo is there. Second thoughts dog him, and he moves, making a circuit of the rooftops, looking for the cause of his discomfort.

-there is a roar in the street below. Hanzo feels his plans ripple apart like a drop of paint in water. He is caught in the moment, motionless. Then he looks. The man he wished to protect is dead. The man he intended to kill is being hustled away.

Hanzo looks for the last piece of the puzzle. There is a woman on a nearby roof. She is tossing something down. An arrow. She is walking away. There is a sniper rifle hanging from one hand, as if an afterthought. 

Hanzo chases. She notices him, and bounds over the roofs like she was born to it.

As he pursues, he bends down where she was, and picks up one of his arrows.

He does not get to her roof before the helicopter comes to bear her away. He has no network. He has no help. He has only his dragons. He escapes the security forces running around on the rooftops and goes to drink. When he cares to face it, in harsh noon, he sees nothing but his failings. No forward path.  

He is astonished when Genji accepts his call.

The woman is Widowmaker. Her agency is Talon. Talon. Of course. They have made offers, and lucrative ones; but they wish him to be a mere lackey, and no money is enough. It appears they have estimated him as alone, and vulnerable, and wish to press him into their service.

They are the enemies of Overwatch. And Genji expects to be on a mission where he will see an agent of Talon, very soon. Hanzo debates continuing his grievance. He could slip away. But he wants the freedom to take his jobs without Talons' harassment. He agrees to a meeting.

Genji has his own agenda, tells him a long story about a friend taken by Talon. His brother is still eerie, machine's stillness and silent functioning, human voice and movements. He speaks in Japanese. _"You have not seen what I have seen."_

_"I do not need to have seen a man turn into a cloud, or a shotgun disappear and reappear, or for all opportune moments to pass while I choose to fall into a trap. I need only see the spider-woman who chose to go against me."_

_"She takes orders. She does not set the plans. Even if it is she you want, the gorilla has said that they work together. To find one is to find a path to the other. I must find him. You must find her. Help me, brother. He is an experienced fighter. We know his loyalties, at least for the present. I will help you, in my turn."_

_"You are not serious. You play at resurrecting a ghost - the ghost of an enemy! Look at them,_ brother. _"_ Hanzo spits it. _"A ragtag group of has-beens, breaking all laws so they may pretend to uphold order. You want me to rescue a brutish criminal for their sake? How low you have fallen."_

_"My reasons should not matter to you, then, high as you are."_

No. He has his way forward. _"I am forced to meet this company, for the time, but I will not associate with such a cause."_

He can hear Genji draw breath to say more, but he does not. He has learned great restraint. It wasn't learned in time to protect their family from his rashness. Hanzo is grieved.

He is forced to a different path than his brother, but at least he is not bound to raise a weapon this time. He almost hopes that they can fight once, side by side, one thing as it once was.

Genji introduces him to a nameless man, a man who gives himself a title and a number. Hanzo barely troubles himself to remember one or the other. There is a warrior in heavy armor with them, too tall and much too cheerful. Hanzo is still polite to him, since the man has intelligent eyes and might have something interesting to say on the ride back.

Assuming he does not sooner decide to go his own way.

The mission touches down. War broke here, decades ago. Hanzo could see shining signs and moving lights as they descended. This sealed-off part of the city is different, empty. He's surrounded by broken walls and empty-windowed buildings, like bleached coral on dry sands. The night is blue; there is a full moon with a thin film of clouds over it. The bones of the buildings stand like bleached coral. The Overwatch band is scouring the area for clues to find their missing soldier. Hanzo was barely listening while Genji explained why they thought they would find anything, and is barely listening now.

When they part ways, he moves on a direct line from the others. He moves along walls and high places, watching for anywhere that would do to land and cover a helicopter.

The explosion puts a stop to that.

It's unreal, a rising fireball, billowing up and out from a peaceful block of ruin. The blues and blacks of the night are recast in searing oranges and whites. He is grateful that the dragon is willing to share its eyes. Otherwise, his night vision would have deserted him, and he would be stranded on his rooftop until he could see to descend. He runs to see what that was.

The fires are still burning when he arrives, swirling and flickering weakly in the rubble. He can see something dark moving; the bulk of a man, hooded, armored. Reaper has not been difficult to find. He sees that he has been detected. He could slip away. He does not need to take this man head-on.

Wait.

Green dots, bright as spring, glow like a leopard's spots on the ground.

He runs up the back of an abandoned bus. The figure is making his slow, steady way towards - he can see a limb, lying on the ground. Sick, he looks again. Past the severed limb, Genji is crawling to his feet. He is missing an arm. His katana is lying a distance away.

Hanzo lets the sound of his bow creaking speak for him.  

Genji's arm shakes, and he collapses. The figure swings around. Its mask is made to appear narrower than the face below must be. He notes it so that when he aims a shot at the neck, it will not deflect. The man cuts a diagonal, moving between him and Genji. "What? You're the only one that can do this?"

The disrespect shocks him. "Do not pretend to be part of a battle between dragons," Hanzo says through gritted teeth.

The man is stalking towards him. He takes a diagonal path. Hanzo swings the bow to track his approach. "I didn't see a battle," he answers, with grating smugness.  

Hanzo sees Genji's hand move. It's in the ancient symbol his brother once used when his father was half-distracted by business: _distract him, I have something to do._ Genji's games do not interest him. But he cannot give such a man the prize of killing a Shimada. Hanzo relaxes the bowstring ever-so-slightly, prepared to goad this Reaper into chasing him.

"But now you will-"

That's when the shape kicks the severed, mechanical arm at his face.

Hanzo is forced to duck. He swings his bow to knock the metal arm aside. In the moment he is tracking its path, the figure charges. _Distract him._ Mother of hell, they will be exchanging words later. Genji is getting up when the figure sweeps two shotguns up. Hanzo was warned about this; he bounces arrows in a hissing wave to force him back. Two of them tear the figure's long coat. One tears through his hood. One punches into his leg, in the calf. Another scars the armor on his chest. They might as well be bits of wood on a wave for all Reaper seems to care. Hanzo dodges. He must lead the figure away before Reaper realizes Genji has moved.

He cannot fight Reaper at anywhere near close range, not without some kind of armor or shield. He can only be a difficult target, and be impossible for Reaper to move away from without taking an arrow. Reaper chooses to deal with this by hunting him down. The game is dangerous. He rolls behind cover that is blasted away; he runs up three stories to find the Reaper already coming towards him over the roof, shotgun raised. He sees the danger and falls. The impact is bad; his ankles, legs, and knees hurt; he collapses. Drags himself away for a few steps, gets up, and runs. His artificial knee gives.  He goes down in a heap, palms scraped to bleeding.

He looks over his shoulder. Reaper has landed behind him. Whether he truly falls like a leaf, or used that strange cloud power and drifted down, he is standing. He raises his hands and brings them together in a sarcastic little clap.

Hanzo gets up. He falls.

Clap.

Hanzo gets up, more carefully this time. Reaper leans forward, movements slowing as if he's fascinated by the struggle. Hanzo pitches down again.

Clap.

He is going to die. He sees it, certain as the night eating the walls around him, death washing towards him. He does not respect this enemy. Pride demands he die on his feet. He puts all his weight on his good knee. Lifts himself up all the way. As he moves, there's a last, sarcastic clap. It is loud and final. But there's a clicking sound and a shudder in his artificial knee. Whatever popped out of place is back; he's supported; he can stand again. Reaper squandered his opportunity, and starts charging. Hanzo leaps for distance.

First, two shots hit the wall just in front of him, bringing him to a halt. Widowmaker. Despair blooms in his gut. He drops flat and rolls in the dust towards a pile of rubble. After he has taken shelter, he looks to see how Reaper has taken advantage of his stop. Reaper has stumbled. Hanzo sees the stark lines of his armor shred into startled lines. Hanzo, as a child, liked to play with magnets and magnetic powder. The effect is the same. Reaper rolls behind cover.

"Son, do not keep running that way!" It's 76. 76 shot in front of him, rather than call.  

"I am not your son!" he roars in rage.

"No shits given! Get over here, to me!"

76's rifle will shoot more accurately at a distance than the shotguns. His own bow is better suited to distance. Why would they stand side by side? Why would they not triangulate? He takes two more steps the way he was going, while Reaper is pinned.

"That's a goddamn trap!" 76 roars at the top of his lungs. "Were you even listening?" 

Oh. He was not being taunted for the sheer joy of it. Reaper intended to panic him, to send him running into the same explosive trap that had caught Genji. Hanzo has no armor. 76 has saved his life.

Hanzo runs to join 76. The wall behind him will not take his weight. He has to double back. Reaper comes out from behind cover, not able to let the opportunity pass, blasting furiously at him. Hanzo's shoulder turns into a blaze of fire. 76 is already returning shots. Hanzo stumbles. He does not stop. He sees it when 76 fires missiles. He sees them twisting around each other, as if imitating dragons in flight. He turns to see them explode. Dust roils up. 

Under the clearing moonlight, it looks darker than it should, as if mixed with something else.

Little flashes and ripples are swimming in his vision. He has been shot, and if he waits until his adrenaline runs out, he will be in a very bad place indeed. Hanzo runs like hell. 76 is standing in the glow of a biotic field, a wonderful, vision-robbing target. Hanzo runs into the gold glow. The field reverses the pellets in his shoulder, knitting muscle, flesh, skin back together, soothing the shock.

Hanzo turns, bow raised. He sweeps the area around 76.

"Don't stop," 76 says. "Don't stop." He scoops up the little thing in the middle of the glow as he skids past it.

"Genji-"

"Do not stop." 76 starts to run. Hanzo, furious, puts his bow up and runs. The man is fast, inhumanly so. Hanzo is forced to run up walls and leap to keep up. 76 doesn't seem to tire. He comes to a stop only when they've reached the little plane that they came in. Genji is making his way there, dragging something. A box. His arm is lain crosswise atop it. Behind him, Reinhardt carries a man. A naked man. Hanzo blinks.

They have their soldier. Well. Lucky them. 76 moves past him, grabbing the man's - not his other arm. He has no other arm. 76 grabs his other side. He's not conscious. His head hangs low. His hair falls long and shaggy around his face. To Hanzo's surprise, he does not smell filthy, and his skin has no marks, cuts, bruises. There are only old scars and a red metal cap on his shoulder for a mechanical limb. 76 is frowning as he assesses this.

"On board," he orders them all. Hanzo moves. This has all been an amazing waste of his time and risk of his life. The man is strapped in next to him. The pilot takes off the moment they are all secure. Hanzo approves. He does not approve of the clear, straight arc the pilot takes into the sky.

"Isn't it wise to evade?" Hanzo asks.

"He won't shoot us," 76 says. "He wanted McCree. He'll want him again. He won't want him in little, charred pieces."

"Be careful, brother," says Genji, reaching to some straps on a first-aid kit by the door. Hanzo's lips thin at the claim. He recognizes medical restraints as Genji unfolds the straps. "Talon's mind control is undetectable." His movement stops. "Are you hurt?"

Hanzo glances down. His sleeve is peppered with bloodstains. "No." He glances to 76. "Biotic field?"

"I remember when it was new technology," the old soldier answers, as Genji busies himself tying the man's wrist up to the frame by his face, and his ankles to a rung below their feet. "Miracle cure. Now we know the limits."

A groan distracts Hanzo. He glances across. The man is fluttering open dark eyes.  His pupils are huge, and he blinks in the light of the ship. He looks around and groans again.

"You're safe now," says 76. "It's okay now. You're going to be okay."

"What - where am I?"

"Rescued," Hanzo says, digging out his bottle of sake. "Be grateful."

"I sure am, pardner," the man says, with a dopey grin, swinging his head to stare at Hanzo. "What's my hand stuck on?"

"We tied your hand. For your own safety." Hanzo takes a quick drink of sake.

"Don't feel safe. I feel stuck." The man jerks on the restraint. There's a red, shining circle on his inner arm, with something in it. The edges are smooth and clean. Hanzo can see the skin's texture is different, it's some kind of scarring, but it's not as interesting as his sake. A second jerk. "Untie me. Please."

"Jesse, do you remember me?" 76 leans forward. "Do you remember Reinhardt?"

Hanzo sees Jesse's lips move on the name. Move again. "Sorry. I got... I got nothing." He jerks on the restraint, chest rising and falling faster. "C'mon, I just got the one hand, and you got two, an' all those muscles. What am I gonna do?"

"They are not sure," Hanzo says. "They think you are very dangerous."

"Me?" The man has long lashes. They flutter. The man slumps, as if boneless, and leans over in a drugged sort of way, his face more on Hanzo's side of the seat than his own. "I scarin' you? Sorry, sugar."

"No, you are not." He looks calm, pacified, his face smoothed by whatever's in his system, his muscles slack. "If I untie you, will you leave me alone?"

Their voices come at once: "Hanzo." "That's not a good idea." "I think not!" Genji is pressing a hand to his visor. 76 is raising both hands, either to clutch his head, or in preparation to shout. Reinhardt, who is closest, is starting to unstrap himself.

"How long I gotta be a prisoner?" Jesse complains to them all. The other three fall into a guilty quiet. Jesse looks at all of them with a slow swing of his head. He rolls his eyes, slumping. "C'mon." He turns his head, leaning in just a little more. His voice drops. "I'll be real nice to you."

A very drugged, very naked (why did they not give him a blanket?) one-armed rescuee is veering close to flirting with him, while Hanzo is just trying to drink sake. The fastest way to shut him up is to oblige him. He's drugged, what's he going to do? Hanzo shrugs, reaches across, and flicks open the binding. 76 completes his gesture and smacks the sides of his head. Reinhardt eases back, clearly unwilling to trigger anything by approaching. The man drops his hand over his knee with a huge sigh of relief, lolling in his seat. Hanzo starts to lift his sake. "Thanks. Can I have some?"

"No. You are drugged."

"Drugged? With what?"

Genji has flicked open the box, although he keeps his head turned to watch them. Hanzo can see a variety of things that go in a pharmacy, everything from needles to medicated creams to gloves. "None of these have labels. It looks like there are only five varieties, but Winston will have to analyze them to know for sure." Boring. Hanzo starts to tune all of it out, lifting the bottle of sake.

He sees the motion start, but he doesn't register it as a punch; the man's hand doesn't even close into a fist until it's a half-inch away from his face. He's fast as a striking snake. Hanzo's head hits the wall. The bottle of sake is snatched as it falls, swung down, and shattered on the armrest. Sake flies. He knows where the shards are going next, they'll be driven at his throat or temple or eye, and he jerks his head away and gets his folded arm up. The ceramic lays his shoulder open to the bone and slices his forearm. The prisoner doesn't waste any more time on him with three men, one armored, on their feet. He folds, trying to cut the bindings at his ankles open now that his assassination has failed. Reinhardt is already there, catching his wrist in both hands. 76 is right behind him, biotic field in hand. Blood is pattering down into the spilled sake.

Genji is laughing wildly. The sound is tearing at the edges. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will frequently be using the trailer/comic versions of powers and abilities, which tend to improve on, or generally be greater than in-game. 
> 
> This is quite handy when dealing with Reaper, since he's easiest to escape from after he's been exploded.


	3. Cold Seep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even the most inhospitable conditions can still hold a hint of promise.

"Yes, I know who Reaper is," says 76 with exhaustion. The three of them are collapsed on a bench by the very edge of the deck. There is salt spray misting Hanzo's hair and eyebrow when the wind picks up. The ship is moving fast over the wide ocean. The plane is in its belly. There are places where it is not safe to fly, and they had to find an alternative. This ship is meant to look like a scrap carrier. He has not met its captain, another of the dregs of Overwatch, and does not intend to. They will take off from it as soon as it is safe. "He was..." 76 clears his throat. "He was like a brother to me."

It wasn't what Hanzo had wanted to hear, for many reasons. "Then he knows how to plan for you."

"He said I was predictable." That is definitely not what Hanzo wanted to hear. 76 leans his shoulders against the ship's railing. "The thing about fighting Reaper, the thing about crossing him, is that Gabriel Reyes might not be anywhere in there we can reach... but his way of thinking? That's still present."

"Go on."

"He's devious," Reinhardt says.

"He's economical," 76 corrects. Semi-corrects. "He always looks for ways to solve more than one problem at a time. Whatever he does, it pulls more than one plan forward." He sighs. "Mr. Shimada, we may have gotten you into this more deeply than you wanted. I've got to tell you, I wasn't expecting to find McCree. Last time, we just found his arm. I thought we'd find hints."

Hanzo prepares to move this conversation along. "You believe that since he saw me join the attack, he counts me as an enemy. Since we have stolen from him, he plans to destroy me."

"In a nutshell," says Reinhardt, lifting his hand and dropping it, as if waving the thought back towards Hanzo. He has been sitting on 76's other side, but as a giant of a man, and since 76 is slouching disgracefully, he is still clearly visible.

"And the woman that I saw is back at Talon, and may be inert between missions. This would remove my only opportunity to learn if she knew the motive behind her commands."

"She's coldblooded in more than one way. Winston theorizes that she would require periods of stillness in order to function with the alterations done to her. We weren't sure before, but we've been scouring the feeds and reports while you were visiting Angela."

"Winston cannot have eyes everywhere. Your organization is a miniscule fraction of what it was."

"True, _but_ we've been able to intercept Talon, and Widowmaker, before. When we compared our timeline with Winston's theories, they meshed. If you want to withdraw until the next time she appears, by all means."

"So who is this enemy?" He watches them both look away. "Genji said that he was determined to kill."

"Determined isn't the word." 76 shifts, settling his weight. The boat hits another wave, and they all bounce on the bench. "I don't mean to be, uh... making assumptions..."

"Go on," Hanzo says. "It is hardly the first insult I have been dealt here."

"Well..." 76 shifts. "Shimadas seem to know a lot about myths. There's more mysticism in this than I expected."

"You don't say." He rolls his eyes when they both look at him. "You believe he is still alive after you hit him with missiles, because you think he turned into smoke. But you were thinking perhaps I would not associate that with a cause beyond the ordinary? You have not insulted me with your assumption. You have insulted me by thinking I am an idiot." 

76 shrugs, and makes no other attempt to lessen it. "From what Genji told us, Reaper is driven to take lives. We thought 'the red' was blood, but it sounds as if it's something more. Something more of a force."

Hanzo nods. The passing of a life creates a ripple of energy, as static among clouds creates thunder. Reaper consumes this aftermath, like a dragon? He remembers their energy blasting through his body, taking his strength with it, although they recognized a Shimada and did not strip the life from him. "I think I know of what you speak."

"Can you tell it in a way that's going to make sense to Lucio?" Reinhardt asks with loud enthusiasm. "He says that nothing I say can be real!"

Lucio. Lu - oh. The happy musician. Hanzo has seen him skidding about. Hanzo has noted that he seems faster when Lucio races by. "Perhaps. Probably not. The way I understand it is not based on anything he would know."

"So Reaper is forced to kill," Reinhardt says. "And Gabriel Reyes was..." he tips his head. The words appear to be missing. "It came easier to Gabriel Reyes than most men."

Gabriel Reyes. It is familiar. Gab - Blackwatch. Hanzo shakes his head. "Why did you not watch this man more closely?"

"He was my brother," 76 says again, more firmly. "I know how it sounds, but Gabriel... he would have had my back, at any moment, at any point, until the end. You didn't know him. You didn't know the pressure he was under."

Hanzo agrees. He doesn't, he doesn't need to. They may be haunted by what they have done. He is not. "How did he give himself mystic forces?"

76 is quiet for a long time. Reinhardt is slumped. "He didn't," 76 finally says. "We did. When Gabriel chose to move against Morrison... well, Morrison had friends on his side, Reyes had his supporters with him. We fought. We killed Reyes. And in a way, he killed me. I got out of there, and Angela, Angela Ziegler... Angela went in. She was panicked. Out of everything we made, she didn't know what she had left. So she found Gabriel's body, and he'd been her friend, and she had her hands on some new technology... she thought she knew what she was dealing with." 

"And she created Reaper."

"She said his body disintegrated," 76 says. "She said he turned to ash. He wasn't supposed to know about that project, but somehow, he knew enough to make that connection." 

Hanzo thinks for a minute. He wonders how well he can trust this group to hold together, or not accidentally turn him into a monster. The odds are not good. "You don't blame him," Hanzo says.

"Of course I blame him. He rebelled against legitimate authority. He led a fucking insurrection."

"Yet, you act as if he defeated you."

"Everything was falling apart. Everything was changing. I noticed he was changing, but I had so much on my mind, I didn't take him aside. I was too hung up on my own plans."

This sounds like a confession. There is no value in telling Hanzo all of this. The man sounds like he did exactly right, what use listening to that? Hanzo reorients their direction. "So why did we find this McCree alive?"

"What?"

"He wanted to hurt you. He has been killing Overwatch to steal the..." he knows what his family calls it in Japanese, but he cannot think of the English word, "shockwave that a vanishing life force creates. He had one of your men.  He kicked Genji's severed arm at me, to throw me off. Why did you not start to receive pieces of McCree?"

"That's a damn good question." 76 sits, wordless, before turning to the side. "Reinhardt?"

"I have no idea!"

"I'll think about it." 76 sighs. "All I can think of is that Reyes was proud of McCree. He seems to have  a lot of his traits still in there, just... warped. Maybe there's nothing he can let go of." He rubs his temples. "You'd better meet some more allies."

"All loyal Overwatch agents, I've no doubt."

"You met Lucio!"

"Song, Xhou, and... Zarya." 76 rolls his head back. "Seem like good kids."

"I am pleased to put my safety in the hands of those who seem like good kids. What other honored acquaintances will I make?"

He can see 76 letting the bait go by. "There's Winston, and Angela. They've been down in a bunker since Genji told them about what happened to Reaper. They've been going through old research, trying to rediscover what they can. We'll have to rest on their island until we have a good way to get all of us off, together."

Reinhardt gets up. "I will get Lucio! He will tell you all about his interesting job!" He clomps to his feet, pauses, and pushes a hand to his back. "In a minute!" he stretches. "Breaking a ramp in that wall took a lot out of me."

As 76 starts to get up, Hanzo reaches out and grasps his sleeve. 76 tugs himself to a stop. "One more thing. Why were you so sure Reaper would not kill McCree to take out all of us, together?"

"McCree was Reyes' trainee, his second in command. I knew he had some kind of plan for him."

"He may have wanted us to take McCree. It may be a test of him, and of your defenses."

"Why would you think that hadn't occurred to me? You think I don't wonder when we rescue a prisoner who's in perfect shape?" 76 is staring through his visor. "It's still going to be a cold day in hell before I leave someone, anyone, in Reaper's hands."

"76," says Reinhardt, stopping in mid-stretch with his hands on his back, "what does it mean?"

"It means he used a damn lot of biotics on him," 76 says. "Either because he needed that much, or to cover something up. Sutures for the tracking implants? Putting him back together after torture? Who knows? For the time being, we have to assume the worst."

"Reyes, you monster," Reinhardt murmurs. "Well. We shall stop him." His smile starts to show, hopeful as sunlight on dark rocks. "We shall keep him from doing any worse."

"We shall surprise him," murmurs Hanzo.

Reinhardt is starting to stride away. 76 drops his voice. "Mr. Shimada... he knows about the dragons."

Hanzo was starting to get up. He settles back. He feels suddenly humiliated, as if 76 had pulled away his clothes. 

"He was trying to chase you into a trap. Reyes didn't mind if enemies killed themselves on his backup plans, but he was direct, hands-on. I can't see Reaper being different. I think he's got some doubts about his ability to dodge those things at shotgun range. He's still figuring out the best way to fight you."

He never had a hidden weapon. He was relying on it, but he never had it. "Why did you not tell me this before? Why did you let me think I had this advantage?"

"You killed good Overwatch agents, good friends, with those damned hellspawn," 76 snaps. "We showed the recording at a certain level of training for years. I didn't realize you'd forgotten." He holds Hanzo's stare, waiting for the counterattack. But Hanzo's anger breaks into small pieces. He looks away. He had killed time and again trying to hold his family together. And it was for nothing. Because his enemy was in his family the whole time. He failed to carry that burden. Now, it weighs him down too much to fight.

"I did what I had to," he says finally. "What they did was at my call. They are not hellspawn. They are powerful, more noble than you can imagine. Your friend's deaths are the result of war. I lost that war." He looks 76 in the visor. "That is not the fault of the dragons."

76 turns and walks away. Hanzo is pretty sure they just sidestepped a fistfight.


	4. Abyssopelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The drowning are often saved by other swimmers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a deeper ocean layer, but it's named after hell.
> 
> (Music for writing: Blue Man Group: The Current.)

The surface is too soft.

It was in the back of his head, now he can see it, now he can't, for the lights in the air. He's shaking. It's too soft. There's lights. He's on his back. Everything is unfamiliar. He struggles.

"Jesse, relax. Relax." It's a familiar voice. "Jesse, you're all right."

"Where-" He can't breathe. Panic has hit. He's trapped somewhere, it's too soft, he's fucked up somehow, he's tipped the balance from bad to worse and he doesn't know what's coming next.

"You're safe." Fingers slip into his. Thick, rough glove. Familiar. Safe? He blinks. "You're in withdrawal. You've been dosed up to just below the red line with-"

"Loyalty serum."

"He told you that?"

 _You should have had it in your mother's womb_ growled at him, matter-of-fact, pitiless, in the dark.

"Yes."

"Right. Well, it's still in your blood, along with a few things Angela's trying to identify. I don't suppose you know what those are?"

_Relax. It's all to help, Jesse. It's all to help._

"No. Let me go."

"Just remember: you're drugged. Relax. That's going to wear off. It'll wear all off."

They sound alike. For a minute, the two voices merge in his head. He can't tell which one is trying to lead him. Panic follows. He chokes it off. He's got it, he knows. "You can't keep me, Morrison."

"He told you?"

_They may come for you. You will have to be strong._

"He told me what?"

"That I'm still around."

_You have to remember what they did to me. What they could do to you._

He blazes up. "Will you make some fuckin' sense?"

"Jesse. What year is it?"

"Fuck off." He jerks on his wrist. There's some kind of heavy, soft cuff on it. "This is makin' it worse. Can you get it off? I'm not gonna do anythin', I'm drugged."

_I'm fading again. Want to see? No? If I can take it, you can look. Look at that. They left me to this, Jesse. Where were you?_

Morrison sounds exhausted, like that's too sad to be funny. "Oh, no you don't. You know better than to try that shit on me, son."

It's Morrison. He's only got one ally, one person he can trust. But it's Morrison, Morrison always tries to do the right thing. Maybe he just doesn't understand. "Please," says Jesse. "Let me go. I have to fix it."

_If they take you, I will come. Stay calm. Play along. Wait for me._

"No. You don't. You've been forgiven. It's all right."

_I'll never desert you. I know what that's like. Oh? You have something you want to say to me?_

Jesse has only the cuff for leverage. He tries to make it work, lunging up. There's more straps over him. "If I've been forgiven, why ain't he here?"

"He needs to work on a few things."

That sounds right. Maybe Morrison isn't _they._ Maybe he's not a prisoner. Jesse relaxes. "Why..."

"McCree. Sleep. It'll make more sense later."

When Jesse's breathing has slowed to something past pretense, Jack looks up. "Nothing?"

"Nothing." Winston puts down the files he was looking at. Restrained or not, there's a rule: no one is ever alone with McCree. Not even Winston, since he's distracted. "No tracking devices. Nothing that could be activated later as a signal. No fiberoptics hidden in his dermis. No unusual chemical traces on his skin." He rubs his forehead. "If that wasn't what you were asking, we can't figure out how that disgusting little man who worked with Ziegler got the, uh, dark energy started." Nobody calls it "Nike" now. "I'm beginning to think he had an idea of what he created. I'm starting to wonder if he was trying to use it to resurrect himself. We're all lucky he failed."

"Great." Jack sighs.

"Any idea what he's apologizing for?"

"Hell if I know. I can't make it out. Maybe just everything. Reaper is angry."

"I'm surprised he recognized you just by voice."

"Maybe it was a fluke." 

"Are you going to tell him about... you know. You? It might help him to recover if he has more friends from back then. We didn't know each other very well, and Genji says their friendship had a lot of gaps."

"Probably not. He was Reyes' second. We were friendly, not friends. But anyway, I was asking more about the cocktail he was given."

"It's hard to analyze it. If that last one truly was some kind of loyalty serum, it means Talon prizes Reaper more highly than we thought. Talon shouldn't just be handing it to him. Who else does Reaper have in mind?"

Now _that_ is a tough little question. Jack puts it aside for when he thinks he's sleeping too sound. "Reyes was a damned good leader. They likely have him training people."

"Which just raises the question of why they want him loyal to Reyes, not them." The gorilla sighs. "I'd like to see an end to the worst thing humans do to each other. This mind control business... it makes me sick."

Maybe Reyes was programming disposable agents? Morrison throws his hands up. Winston's right, it doesn't make any sense, and it's distasteful to think about. "Reyes had him for five weeks. That's a long time. How long was Amélie out of reach? Sixteen weeks?"

"I wonder if Reaper stole it." Winston is half-listening. He looks up. "Amélie? I think we lost her for fourteen weeks before she was spotted. But she didn't have any chemical traces when we picked her up. I'm still not sure what kind of opening they found to use with her."

"No one is a worse enemy than ourselves." Morrison looks down at the sleeping man.

"You sound like Zenyatta."

"It's true. We fractured. Now we tear each other apart." His fingers wrap around the bed railing. "I'm not sure what to do with him, at least until Reaper's showed his hand. We can't let him go. We can't keep him with us."

"That's a good point."

"What?"

"Reaper hasn't shown his hand. Genji said there were clothes in the room, he just didn't have time for them. Armor. So if Reaper hadn't gotten to the stage of," the gorilla clears his throat, uncomfortable, "breaking his identity down for a new one..."

"Winston," says Morrison wearily, "you didn't see Reyes after McCree suddenly dropped off the Blackwatch roster. He was stunned. Something about it ate at him. This is one _hell_ of a lot better shape than I expected to find McCree in.  Reaper is all of Reyes' dark side, amped up and let loose. Either he's been too busy for a little one-on-one with an asset he worked hard to capture, or McCree caved a long time ago. Which do you think?"

"If mind control was that easy, we'd all be working for Talon. Maybe he knows something we don't about McCree's training, or state of mind, or he kept changing his mind about his plans."

"Gabriel." Morrison rubs the sides of his head. "What have you done?"

**

"He's awake!"

Hana's enthusiastic chirp is the first thing he hears. "Jesse! You're -" she claps her hands together. "Can I hug you?"

That's a bad sign. Play nice. "Sure, darlin', I'm happy to be your shoulder," Jesse says. Her fine hair scatters over the empty space where his arm should be. She smells like bubble gum and flower shampoo. Such a cute little girl, not that he'd call her that out loud. He knows she'd take it different than he meant it. They're from very different places. "What happened? Did we crash?"

There is a snort. Jesse pushes himself up on one elbow. There's a stranger in the infirmary. He gives Jesse an unfriendly look down the length of his nose. Ziegler is nearby, washing her hands and changing her gloves. He knows the tiny infirmary, now, he's seen it before, he visited Zarya in here after the last little trip. Feels like years since he's been in here, and now he's here in a bed. And now she is poking at the man's shoulder. His shoulder looks fine to Jesse. Jesse wonders what his problem is.

"No," Hana says finally, looking afraid. Misgiving curls in Jesse. It's too bright in here. There should be darkness. There should be... what is he expecting? There should be-

It settles down on him with slow, crushing weight. He rolls back down, lying still.

"I'm so sorry, Jesse. We looked for you." Her slim hand is tight. She has a hell of a grip. Must be all the control sticks she has to use. "We were so scared. We're so glad you're back."

"When do I get my arm back?" He turns as a new shadow moves. Genji. "You're all right. He told me you were okay, but sometimes he made it sound rough." More is falling into place now. He struggles to sit up. He's still strapped down. Genji and Hana move together to free him. He sits up. Ugh. He feels too light. He's lost muscle through the ordeal. Both ordeals? He doesn't know. He rubs a hand on his face. Into his hair. His skin feels tight with memory. Hana reaches for his shoulder, and he draws back, lifting a hand to stop her. Genji circles, movements fast and purposeful.

"Not gonna hurt her," he growls at Genji.

"I know."

"Are you-" Ziegler is coming towards him. He swings the palm towards her. Oh. Shit. Memories are swirling, half-formed and conflicting. They're looking at him like he's going to scream, or combust, or pull out a shotgun, he doesn't know. He pushes the stupid little half-railing on the bed out of the way and swings his feet down.

"What can we do?" Hana asks.

"Just back off." He knows it's rude, but he doesn't have the mental space to find a soft way for her. His balance feels wierd without the mechanical arm. He moves stiffly towards the bathroom. Steps in without turning the light on. He's afraid to look in the mirror. In the dimness, he looks... completely normal. He doesn't know what he was expecting: handprints? midnight stains left on his skin? Reaper could have destroyed him, Reaper could have rearranged his face or torn it blank. Reaper chose-

His breathing is getting shallow. He forces it to match the old count saved in his head for emergencies. He'd begged for Gabriel. He hadn't gotten Gabriel. Had thought he was going crazy, before the needle, before it all got... jumbled.

He's afraid to know. He can tell parts of his brain are trying to whisk things out of sight, things that are going to hurt to look at. What it's leaving in the open is bad enough. He can hear nothing through the open door. They're quiet. They're still. It must be worse than he can fit in his realizations right now.

He raises his voice. "Anyone dead?"

"No," four voices say at the same time. Great. He's even got the strange asshole feeling sorry for him. Something familiar about him, he's seen something like that face, at some point. It's safely back behind whatever just happened, so he takes a minute trying to push for it. Nothing's coming. There's too much in the way.

He looks down. Reaper liked the dark. Was teaching him more about stealth. He remembers. Something else surfaces behind that. He remembers what happened when he tried to escape. He remembers...

He said something. He said something, and it all changed.

 He remembers his own voice, begging, although the words are tumbled and worn away. No, that wasn't it. That was before the needle, but it wasn't what he said. It's hard to sift through it all, like kicking through rotted leaves, turning up maggots. He tries to think of Reaper as a machine, as Reyes without heart, as a ghost. As what happened after Gabriel moved on.

What did he say? It's gone.

Sense memory hits: _reaching, expecting the same skin he knew so well. Finding something changed.  Cold breath in his face, firm touch lifting his chin. Breathing Reaper's air is like the feel around his fingers when he was at the ocean for the first time. He put a curious hand in the surf, flecks of sand scraping by with the smooth pull of water. The mist isn't as aggressive with his body as it is with Reaper's, but sometimes it bites. He can feel little coppery flowers bloom on the inside of his mouth. Jesse kisses him anyway, can't turn him away, cold,_ cold _burn, climbing into Reaper's armored grip._

Jesse throws up in the sink.

His friends are there in the next moment. Genji gets there first, blocking the other two from getting too close. His metal fingers are raised, not to touch but to hold their helplessness. "Can you come out?"

Jesse spits. Yeah, he's done trying to pick out memories, not until he's got some room.

"Yes." He steps out into the doorway. He can see the strange asshole headed out the door. Good, that's one. Hana's eyes are bright with tears, she's seen so much, she shouldn't have to cope with this too. "Hana, can you do me a favor? Get me some clothes out of my room? Mercy's togs are drafty as hell. An' if someone wouldn't mind, it's damn slow gettin' dressed one-handed." She skitters off on her errand. That's two. "Genji, what happened?"

"You and I went to find Reaper about six weeks ago now. He split us up. I found the blood where he captured you. We found your arm about three weeks later on a raid. We didn't expect to find you. We were hoping to, but we expected nothing more than clues. I found you in a basement under a basement. There was no way to get up and down carrying you. I had to get Reinhardt to get you out of there. He tore down half the wall with his hammer. Hanzo and 76 kept Reaper distracted. You have been recovering for about a week. You have woken up, but you have not been..." Genji stops like he's hiding something.

" _Hanzo?_ That asshole is Hanzo Shimada? He's not tryin' to kill you no more?"

"He will not call me 'brother,' but he will work with us, for the time being."

"Fuckin' wonderful." He is about to say some truly nasty things about that, but Genji did not say anything. Maybe Genji approves, so he leaves it rather than put his foot in it. No sense making a bigger mess. "Where did Morrison come from?"

"Who?"

"Morrison was in here. Morrison was talking to me."

Genji's head is shaking, very slowly.

"I can provide a sedative-" starts Angela.

"No more drugs," Jesse snaps. It's much louder than he means it. Angela's knuckles whiten on her datapad. "Well, 'cept nicotine and coffee. How long have you let me lie there without a smoke? No wonder my hand's shakin'. When do I get my arm back?" There's no reason for anyone to think of what's waiting in the catalogue of half-memories. If he stays like himself, neither of them will suspect. "Angela, can I get coffee?"

There's the faintest movement between them, a quarter-swing of their heads. Genji's visor is hard to read, but it could be eye contact. "I'll have someone bring it," says Angela brightly. She relaxes one hand on the datapad and starts hitting it with bright little taps.

"You dodgin' the arm question?" he has to ask, he knows he's said it over and over and there's no answer given, quick as they are to hand him everything else. "You said you had it."

"It's not safe to get to Torbjorn right now, but some of the attachments are damaged. Reaper didn't remove it very gracefully." Jesse nods. He can remember, can still feel the boot on his back. She finishes tapping and looks up. "I hope it didn't hurt too much."

"Gabriel knew where the safety for the nerve attachments was," he says. "Reaper didn't want me dead of shock."

"They're truly different?" Genji asks. "That different?"

"Yes." At his tone, Genji just gives a small nod. 

He tosses his head. There is a little silence. He's not going to cry. He'd shed his tears for Gabriel back when he first thought he was dead. And again, after he'd tried over and over to reach through the armor, and all he found was Reaper.  A ghost. Not really Gabriel, just someone who thought he was. Jesse just can't cry anymore.

"I have brought coffee!" Reinhardt bellows, ducking through the infirmary doors as they swish open. Genji twitches like a startled cat. Angela drops her datapad. Jesse is too shocked to be any more shocked, so he waves. "Jesse McCree!" He flings his arms wide in an expansive gesture. Reinhardt carries his bulk well, but he is also used to having to move his armor, so that sweeping movement nearly paints the wall with coffee. "You are standing! We were all worried sick!" He advances, arms wide.

Jesse considers if another touch is going to fuck him up. Reinhardt is, in his own way, innocent as Hana, good and sincere in a way that makes dark shadows flicker. Jesse has had time to ground himself. He accepts it. Reinhardt's chest is wide enough, and his arms long enough, that the hug brings hot coffee by Jesse's ear. Jesse pats him twice on the side of his head. His hair is old, feels rough and brittle, but Jesse can feel the power in him. Reinhardt lets go after a swift bearhug and holds out the coffee like he's presenting a medal.

"Thanks." He notices Brigitte in the doorway, hanging back uncertainly. He tips her a little wave with the cup, but she's looking at Genji.

"This is a hell of a thing," Reinhardt says, propping his hip on a folded infirmary bed. Its wheels are safely locked. Reyes was always irritated by Reinhardt, his raw honesty, his constant refusal to compromise. Jesse flinches from picturing Reaper's reaction. "It is good to see you looking as if you are back in there."

"Good to be back. Missed y'all. Why is it not safe to get to Torb? He okay?" Which leads to a flurry of words and hand gestures from Reinhardt as he explains the problems with travel and Torbjorns hidey-hole. His enthusiasm has calmed to his usual intensity. It ends with "But at least we have Brigitte!" He gestures to the door as if introducing royalty. "I'm sure she'd be happy to look at whatever the problem is. She is most skilled at repair."

"Hello," says Brigitte, with a tiny little wave. "I think we've met." Hana is at her elbow with a stack of clothes. McCree's spare boots dangle in her other hand. She hasn't brought a hat. Poor girl, must be clear out of her mind with worry, not to think of that one.

"Sure have, sunshine. Good to see you again. Thanks, darlin," he adds as Hana plops the stack down on the end of the bed. "Looks just right."   

"Where's the problem?" Brigitte asks. "I'm skilled at repairing all kinds-"

"I'll show you," Angela says. Hana is still hoping to help, and flutters with them. "Reinhardt, will you stay with Genji, in case anything's needed? Thank you." She moves quickly, pushing Brigitte out with a gentle hand and closing the door.

"I'm sure it will be a nuisance," Reinhardt says sympathetically. "But it is only until we know! At least it was only Hanzo Shimada, eh?" His voice drops conspiratorially. "What an asshole."

"I hadn't... mentioned..." says Genji.

Jesse stops rubbing his hand over his worn, second-favorite pair of pants. He's not getting dressed in front of them, although he wants to. But that sounds damn serious.

He puts his coffee down on a tray.

He holds up his hand to stop them both.

He picks up the coffee.

He drinks about half of it.

"That's more like it. _Now_ tell me."

"Reaper hoped to force you to resist rescue," Genji says flatly. "We expected it. Hanzo did not respect the possibility, and was injured." He hesitates in the face of McCree's stare. "You injured him."

"Even I was surprised! You looked as if you would not be able to scratch your nose. But you were very quick and _very_ precise."

"I'm gonna need a cigarette before you finish this. C'mon, Reinhardt."

Reinhardt smacks his pockets. "Sorry. I do keep a pack in my pocket, for friends, but Brigitte keeps throwing them out."

McCree resigns himself. "So. Injured Hanzo."

"You know we have people on the team who aren't highly trained in self-defense, and, or, aren't as strong as you," Genji says. Reinhardt puts a hand on his shoulder. "Lucio. Mei. Hana. Brigitte. Even Angela. Talon enjoys mind control. Reaper works for Talon. You have been trained to hide what you intend. You have been trained to kill a thousand different ways. We have to be realistic," his voice is dragging, this is hard for him, "about what might happen if we are careless."

"But we want you to stay and get back to your old self! We don't want you to leave. We don't want Talon or Reaper picking you up again. We are only cautious. We are still your friends."

"So I get the arm back when y'all know I won't put its fist through anyone's face."

"We would do the same if it were anyone else," Genji says. "I admit," he pops shuriken out of his arm and flashes them back and forth, "I would be a puzzle."

"Speakin' of, is that a new arm? Your shoulder looks shinier."

"No. It didn't hurt. Angela made too many failsafes if I had to do my own field repairs. But Reaper likes his opponents... disarmed." It is such a terrible joke that Jesse feels bad for laughing. They laugh with him, a little too long.

"But we are so sorry, Jesse," Reinhardt says.

"It's okay." Jesse settles back. "Hell, feels like I measure my life in stretches of gettin' redemption, what's another climb? But if y'all don't mind, I want to get back in my clothes."

"Yes! But you have spent enough time in the infirmary. Let's get out of here first. I will walk you back to your room." 

Jesse knows why. Angela has some mighty shiny surgical tools stored in here. Hana was probably gone for so long because she was doing a last check of his room for hidden weapons.

He's not even sure where to start digging for what's left in his head. He's not sure if he's feeling the last bits of being drugged, or if it's just his usual slowness to talk about pain. Maybe right now, it doesn't matter which one. Maybe he's got a little space for it. Maybe it's his own damn business.

Hopefully they'll let him have a steak knife, because damn, does he want a steak. He finishes his coffee and gets to his feet.

He's back.


	5. Cabbeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No man is an island, and currents can interplay in complicated ways.

It's the most god damned thing.

"Can I-"

"Not now."

76 backs off. Jesse ignores him.

It's the third day. He's soaked in sweat. He took his shirt off a while back, now, he's lost track of time. His hair's disgusting, tracked down his neck in strings. He hasn't gotten more memories, not many more, it's all lost in the mist.  

Jesse headbutts the punching bag. It hurts, it's a damn fool thing to do, but since he's just got the one hand, maybe he wants to scrape his scalp a little bit. Who gives a shit. It's his scalp.

It all helps. It doesn't make him feel more at home in his body, but it helps. _Reyes, why the shit did you leave me to that._ Which makes him remember Reyes wasn't there. All that was there was some damn ghost who seemed to want not to hurt him as much as he wanted to hurt him, and didn't know how not to anyway. Or something. He's quit trying to remember. If he lets it go, just like that, it was like being in a nightmare. And now he's awake. Just come out of the fog. Just leave it behind. Just move towards what has to be done.  

Jesse puts everything back on beating the punching bag.

So. Reaper. A force of anger and confusion, menace and pain. Maybe he had to get close to know that he couldn't get Gabriel Reyes out. Sometimes Reaper had talked kind of like him. Sometimes he'd acted kind of like him.  Sometimes he'd thought Gabriel was there with him.

He'd gone leaping after a ghost, and he'd caught nothing but smoke and ashes, gotten his own stupid ass lost.  

"Jesse?" Angela. They're underground right now. The landing pad has a little tucked-away spot to hide the plane. Behind that, the little workout room, with the showers tucked off to one side; behind that, the archives. Angela has been fucking cloistered in that little back room, like a nun in worship, seeking good. She burns with dedication. It's a little worrisome, since whatever she's doing, she wants results.

"Yeah, darlin'?"

She taps her knuckles, making a sympathetic face. He glances down. Yeah, his knuckles have kind of gone to that steady, dull burn that says he's worn the skin off, even through the layers of wraps. He's not surprised to see little blooms of blood. He turns his hand so he can undo the bandage, but since he forgot his other damn arm is missing, it doesn't help. She reaches out, unwrapping them and dabbing little strokes of biotic fluid on.

"They're not gonna callous any better if you do that." She glances up, but ignores him. Strips her gloves off while he waves his hand, waiting for the skin to reform, the fluid to dry. It strikes him as odd that he's impatient with this miraculous treatment. But he is.

"Are you still having nightmares?"

"Yeah." He was expecting that. "Did you analyze all that shit?"

She cocks her head to the side. "I can't figure out why the euphoric shot was in there."

"Hunh?"

"Euphoria. Good feeling."

Jesse kind of thinks he might know. It doesn't make him any less angry, but he does feel an odd kind of pity. "Maybe he didn't even know what it was for. Maybe he thought it was something else. Reyes wasn't a fucking chemist." Reyes had appointed people to apply drugs when they were necessary, and when they weren't, he'd skipped it, because Reyes had limits. "Did Reaper go to pharmacy school while he was getting his armor bonded to that misty shit? I don't think so. I wouldn't bother tryin' to guess his logic. You'll just wear yourself out."

There's a long silence. When he glances over, she's frowning. "Reaper seems extremely logical and calculating."

"Yeah? There's tactical plans, and then there's manipulation. Reyes was good at both. That don't mean that he remembered all the ins and outs."

The further he gets from it, the more he thinks he's right: Reaper wasn't trying to break him. Reaper was just insane. It sure as hell doesn't mean Jesse forgives him, but he understands better. Jesse's getting tired of shadowboxing. He's getting tired of the gray and misty spaces in his memory. 

"Can you wrap me back up?"

The punching bag looks good just now.

**

Zarya whoops as she gets Reinhardt to drop to one knee. Reinhardt roars in laughter. The two of them clasp hands, give each other nods, and circle again. They are friendly and happy.

Jesse and Hanzo are not.

"Jesse McCree. _Let go of my hair_."

"Sure thing, sunshine. Just wishin' I had a knife."

It is not quite as hostile as it sounds, because McCree doesn't have another hand. Hanzo understands what he means: the second half of his attack is missing, undone. Jesse could still use his position, if he were serious, he could try beating Hanzo's head into the ground. Jesse  takes the knee off his back, the grip off his hair. Hanzo gets to his feet. McCree backs off, giving him space.

Hanzo is giving himself a little exercise. With Genji haunting the place, his brother, back from the dead, with his face hidden and some great percentage of his body gone, Hanzo thinks he is going insane. He cannot stop watching Genji to try to see what has changed. He cannot decide if some points of his body language are the same or not. He wants to ask _why didn't you_ and _why wouldn't you_ and other things that would only make everything worse. He knows Genji has absolved himself of all wrongdoing, as clean in his own mind as a stone after rain. Logically, that means Genji has decided it's all his fault. And Hanzo cannot fight a ghost.

McCree is, obviously, driving himself, and, obviously, wants to fight. Hanzo would not be surprised to learn that he there is aggression towards them programmed into his muscles. There are other, simpler explanations as to why a warrior would be hostile and angry after a rescue. Hanzo is not just amusing himself. With Mercy, Winston, and 76 always locked in some kind of whispered debate and vanishing back downstairs to crack as many files as they can, leaving him up on the surface with a ghost, he is going a little insane. But most of all, he wants to know: how skilled is McCree, and how much of a problem is he, should he turn on them?

Every once in a while, he tests him. Hanzo slows down, mimicking the pace of one of the teammates. He fights more like that person, and he inevitably tosses in a mistake, either one he's seen them make, or extrapolating from their shortcomings. McCree follows up instantly, every time.

McCree just walked Hanzo through how he'd kill Hana, had he another hand with a knife. It is a faster death than how he chose to react when Hanzo borrowed Mei's too-defensive style and drops his hand too slow, like she does when she's tired. It is a slower death than what happens if Lucio were to overestimate the usefulness of some of his flashier moves. (Hanzo is not sure he would, but he was also curious how some of the _capoiera_ would feel to perform.)

(It's very fun.)

"You done?" McCree prompts, curious, and Hanzo decides he has been standing for too long. He attacks.

He knows he is the more practiced fighter, but he does not let it be a comfort. Pride is part of Hanzo, but survival is not about superiority in combat alone. McCree knows Hanzo and Genji are better martial artists. He knows he's missing an arm. If McCree is holding back a strike, Hanzo knows he will lead off with something else. An ambush. A weapon. Poison.

Perhaps he is ascribing too much abrasion to Genji's frequent presence. Perhaps Genji's silent observance is merely the same impulse Hanzo has to see where Genji is, when it is too quiet.

McCree's fist thumps much too hard into his chest. Hanzo grunts, and they both back away.

"Your control is worsening," Hanzo says. "We stop now." McCree nods. He takes two more steps away before he drops his guard. Hanzo lets his hair down and re-ties it while he watches him go to the showers.

He turns. 76 is sitting on the floor. It's a rare appearance, but with Reinhardt wanting to spar Zarya, he has chosen to come up for a time. He has his knees up, his elbows on his knees, his visor hiding his thoughts.

"You saw?"

76 nods. "I'll be sure to work with Song this evening." He pauses. "I'd give a lot to know how much he's deliberately answering when you question. He's refused to practice with them, after all, and I'm not sure I'd let him."

"Genji has said," he looks around, and yes, there's the ninja, by the door, "he doesn't even have his own fighting style. Are you sure he's that fluent in others'?"

"He ranked high in Blackwatch. He might not seem devious, he might cover it up with that grin and that slow talking, but it's in there." 76 gives him a little grin. "Don't tell me you're letting him fool you again."

"I am not." Hanzo moves for the door. Genji is chuckling.

Hanzo moves past, as if he isn't there.

**

"Now that is one tough little bear!"

Jesse looks up. Reinhardt has slammed into the showers, wide, white grin, rubbing his shoulder. Jesse is leaning under a spray of cool water.

"I saw y'all tearin' up the mat," he says. "She's quick." He watches Reinhardt stiffly reach to turn the water on. "Don't part of you want to, maybe, take a gaggle of quick little bears everywhere with you?"

"Are you trying to shoo me into being an instructor?" Reinhardt laughs. "A crusader's place is on the front lines!"

"Do what you want. Puttin' you anywhere is like trying to move Winston."

Reinhardt doesn't speak until water has flattened his long hair down over his face, like  a wet sheepdog. Jesse looks from his dripping head to the hard tile wall behind him, and he feels a muscle in his leg twitch. He leans further under the spray. So many echoes, so many things out of place in his head. And so much risk to people, because of him. "Something is bothering you."

"He might not know it was Genji that found me," Jesse says slowly, "but if you broke a path down to me with that hammer, you wrote your name all over my rescue. Reaper's a goddamn thundercloud, lookin' for a place to land the lightnin'."

"Jesse McCree." Reinhardt's smile is gone, but when he lifts his curtain of hair out of the way with a broad hand, his eyes are still compassionate. "No Crusader retires. I will pick every fight with Talon that I see. I will protect that little bear until she's grown huge, roaring, and clawed. I will break down every prison they have. I will rob them of every prisoner I can reach. I do not want my death to cause only an inconvenience on a roster. I hope to crush my enemy under my armor as I fall!"

Jesse shakes his head. "All right, big bear. Just don't squash 'em flat for a long time more. An' I noticed you've been encouragin' D.Va to slam her mech around like she's part cue ball. I hope y'all remember we're kind of _on a cliff._ " Reinhardt just laughs. Jesse wraps himself in a towel. Hanzo prowls in, his hair loose around his shoulders, with three different bottles in one hand.

Jesse takes his gaze off them before Hanzo notices it's funny. Hanzo's doing his part. If Genji isn't giving him shit, Jesse isn't going to start. Not after Hanzo's been so careful about protecting the others.

Jesse decides Hanzo isn't as good at that as Reinhardt. There's just something missing. Maybe the word's "heart." 

**

"I made you a mix!"

For a moment Hanzo thinks that Lucio is talking to him. It will not be done with joy, putting him back into his place, but he is not to be greeted like a close -

Brigitte moves into his line of sight with her hand extended. She takes the lollipop out of her mouth. "Thanks! What's the occasion?"

"You said we were making too much noise outside the workshop. It's for next time you want to concentrate. You said you like to listen to music, right?"

"I didn't mean to be rude! I was just trying to hear what Reinhardt was saying from under the truck. I usually don't listen to music while I'm repairing, but I will be sure to give this a shot."

"Oh. It messes with your concentration?"

"No, I hammer and weld too much. I'd drown out your work with mine. But I'll definitely give it a try next time I start drafting something! Thank you so much! Excuse me, Mr. Shimada." She goes by. Hanzo has heard her call to Genji by name. Lucio tags with her, easily gliding along on his skates, enthusing about an underground German DJ and flicking him a careless little wave. Hanzo ignores it. He is not to be greeted like a close friend.

The sky is beautiful, tropical, dotted with puffs of clouds. The sea is aqua. It shines like a gem in the sunlight. They stand in the middle of a relic of Overwatch. A hoverrail track, bubbled over the top with protective glass, runs around two-thirds of the island. A weed-choked landing platform takes up most of the cliff surface. High above them is a thin netting, covered in chemicals and little screens. Dripping with moss, it is still perfectly functional. It is protection from satellite view. 

The island is shaped like a broken stair-step. The hoverrail leads up to a signal platform and overlook. Hanzo has been there twice, and found it stripped of any useful equipment. The island has no natural sources of water. The island's crusting of fierce, bristling green is mostly desert plants and hardy trees. A little moisture seeps through the rocks here and there, but there is not enough fresh water for the place to be habitable. He is surprised they bring such a large number of people here, and only one transport.

Their plane is tucked away safely under the landing pad, hidden from sight. He wishes they were already on it. But they seem to be in no hurry to take McCree to any of their other bases. He supposes that having him around more vehicles, more paths out, would be a risk. But he remembers their enemy. They are here for too long.

It has been a week, and McCree seems to be stable. But today, 76 has been talking to him, and 76 appears to  be slumping. Hanzo has not been terribly impressed with McCree's cunning. Yet, he knows he can pry advantages open and maneuver through. If they will not stay in motion because they are worried about McCree, they should respect that more. It is time to interfere.

He interferes. "Who is standing guard?"

"Winston."

"Winston is below ground."

"He's watching our scanners. Hanzo, there's three hundred sixty degrees to watch, and it's all open sky and ocean. Nobody's going to see anything useful. On the other hand, our detection is counting the moths in the air, the fish under the sea, and watching for anything to pass in front of the stars overhead. Winston will be alerted if there's so much as a whale."

"I wish I were as comfortable with such dependence as you are with my name," Hanzo says. McCree snorts and looks away. It is not friendly. "Does Reaper know this place exists?"

"Yes." McCree is the one to answer. "He knows about just about all of 'em. We're hidin' on one leaf on a tree."

"You have a lot of peace with his knowledge."

McCree's face goes stony, and he leans back. "There a reason you yankin' on my chain? You've been testin' me. You still tryin' to see what it takes to make me fight?"

"You would need your other arm," Hanzo assures him, "and given your display of strategy, you would still have too great a handicap."

76 sits up and starts to take a breath. Anything he might say is drowned out. "Why do you have such sour faces? It's a beautiful day!" Wilhelm is like some juggernaut of joviality. He walks between Hanzo and Jesse to shake hands with 76. Then he plops down on the end of the bench.

"Oh, y'know," says McCree, pretending Hanzo isn't there, "the usual. How much of Gabriel is in Reaper? And can we get him out? My answer is 'his memories' and 'I sure as hell couldn't.'" Hanzo considers pointing out that they are only miring themselves deeper in survivor's guilt, but if they are spending so much time at it, he will be wasting his words. "I know I tried."

"You get that face every time this comes up," 76 says to Hanzo.

"He chose to rebel," Hanzo says tersely. "Duty is duty."

"You talked about this before? You knew what happened, exactly?" McCree is all sudden interest. "Cause I left, everything went to shit, and then... well, Reaper, Morrison, and Amari are all gone. Only one left standing was me."

"Yes. I was there." 76's words are pinched.

"Hunh. Well. What happened?"

They should not let him hear anything that might reinforce Reaper's influence. "McCree is not objec-"

"There was a confrontation between Morrison and Gabriel Reyes," says 76. "They were both armed, both backed by armed men. There was a gunshot. Morrison pulled his gun. Reyes pulled his gun. There was trouble. There was violence."

McCree looks up slowly. "Why would Morrison draw first?"

It's exactly what Hanzo was worried he'd ask. "Because he was doing his duty. Insurrection can't be tolerated." McCree is still ignoring him. Which is too bad, because he's trying to head him off from any traces of medicated dependence - why can't the others see the risk?

"Don't forget, they were in Swiss headquarters," said Reinhardt. His eyes are on the ground. "Reyes' work had been spilling out. Everyone there was shocked. They were confused. I think it was worse than Morrison had realized, and it was all too much to deny. I think he was looking at the man with new eyes. Of course he drew."

"It's an old story now," 76 says. "I guess we should leave it alone. What's done is done."

"Mercy still talks about getting Amélie back," McCree says softly. He swallows. "Dreaming's human."

"I still remember seeing her dance," said Reinhardt. "She was so happy."

"What? Who?" Hanzo cannot follow. He hasn't heard that name. Did they lose another agent, and nobody mentioned it? 

"Widowmaker," says 76. "Overwatch lost her in the last days. She wasn't an agent, she was the wife of an agent. Dancer. I know a lot of Overwatch staff were at their wedding. Now she's with Talon. She's killed friends of mine. She doesn't seem to recognize us. She doesn't seem to have the same personality. She doesn't have the same physiology. Something's changed her, and we think it started with changing her mind." He glances up, rubbing his knuckles. Reinhardt slumps. "We weren't going to say anything about you wanting to chat," 76 continues after a minute. "Like I said, she's killed friends. We want to save her, if we can. But if she's made her enemies, she's made her enemies." Reinhardt nods somberly.

Hanzo remembers her strut away from her kill. He did not mind losing to an expert marksman, but having lost his chance to a _dancer_ rankles.

McCree stands up suddenly. "I've had about enough of sittin' here. I want to walk."

76 gets up, silently. He and Reinhardt glance at Hanzo. Hanzo gives a little nod. It is a good excuse to look over the cliff, and see all the best lines of approach. Reinhardt settles into a sunny spot on the bench and relaxes, closing his eyes.

He has misgivings about staying. He has even more about the group. Overwatch is fragile. If Talon lands one good hit, Genji will be as loose as a leaf in the wind. Hanzo's tenuous space will be, once more, at risk of invasion. But he will help to babysit this liability, if the tradeoff is knowing Genji will stay out of his future.  


	6. Riptide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death Blossom is ready.

They have been here too long. They should already have joined Genji and this Zenyatta. Mercy's obsession with research is blinding her to the danger. Winston is submerging himself too. 76 has over-invested himself in their efforts. They are idiots, and Hanzo feels trapped.

Hanzo paces. He retreated to the heights of the island, needing solitude, needing space. They have trapped themselves, and he knows it. They are vulnerable. The little shelter is backed onto a high cliff. Although it is a sturdy bunker, Reaper's fondness for explosives makes any height insecure.

Any height but the secretive ones. As Mercy, Winston, and 76 take themselves deep into the archives, Hanzo uses the overgrown transport tubes as his highway, searching for his own peace of mind. They are shatterproof, thick, arcing security glass, a little tunnel of safety. Jungle vines have climbed the supports and algae has covered the sides. He is able to move through them without fearing detection, up to the high cliffs to look out, and back again.

He is the only one that seems concerned. It's a lazy afternoon. Lucio has been skating around on the landing pad below. Hanzo has been pacing, making laps through the tubes, up on the cliff, changing his route frequently to avoid predictability.

Is that a darker patch on the side of the transport tube? Hanzo moves away from the metal edge, where the algae has more shelter to grow. The shadow looks too dark, as if the tube is broken. But he has been past that point six times now, and light does not spill in through the wall and floor. There is a white patch near the top, turned toward him.

It's not a shadow.

Hanzo reaches for his communicator. He does not have his communicator. He tossed the communicator back down when Brigitte handed it to him, since he will not need their warning. It was trash, meant to tie him to their insistence on staying in place.

Lucio whirls in a long, graceful curve, under the patch of midnight.

It drops.

Hanzo punches the glass. He sees the shape slam Lucio down on the ground, all hard armor, shining edges. What is comically pretentious in stillness has turned to menace. Reaper half-rises. Waits. It has no weapons in its hands. For a moment he dares to hope that Reaper has come to terrorize, but to talk. Perhaps he will offer a trade, and they can negot-

Lucio's chest arcs as he regains the air knocked out of him. Reaper kneels down, both hands reaching.  Hanzo starts running. Reaper was merely waiting until Lucio had air to scream. He's now bait.

The scream shreds the air.

By the time he gets to a break in the glass, a clear space, Lucio is alone, on the ground, twisting like a landed fish, hands clasped over his face. Raw screams tear the air. Reinhardt has already burst through the door, Zarya close behind him, Mei between them. Reaper is on the roof over the doorway, both guns crossed over his chest. He is looking down. He steps off the roof as an arrow tears the air. It hits, but Reaper has already... changed - somehow more in control of his abilities than before, mist swirling around him, pulling back into shape the moment Hanzo's arrow passes through. Hanzo needs a way to stun him. He does not have it.

Mei starts to look up as the air above her darkens. Reinhardt is readying his shield, but he and Zarya are focused on Lucio. They do not even seem to notice the descending shadow. Reaper might shoot twice before they can react. An arrow flies, but there seems to be more than one Reaper, with more than two guns. Hanzo should have hit him in the throat. He has no idea where his arrow went.

"Die." Shotgun cracks come close together with it. Reaper's voice is ugly. He is twisting, more agile than he should be, more stable than he should be. Both shotguns out at full length, fire blooming. There seems to be more than one of him. Reinhardt's armor is buckling. "Die!" Hanzo can still hear him over the booming shotguns. Reaper is dancing between his targets as he spins. The mist is shrouding them all, keeping him from finding a clear target with their bodies so close together. He holds his arrow. He can't tell where Reaper will be in the next instant. Where Zarya will dodge. Where Reinhardt will stagger. Mei sinks to her knees. Zarya's purple bubble appears. It vanishes in the next moment, overwhelmed. Mei disappears, covered in ice. Reinhardt's shield is up, but it already has cracks in it, and Reaper is already inside. Pieces of metal and ice are flying. Despite the savagery of the attack, Hanzo still sees purpose in Reaper's motions. His steps are taking him in front of them, where he can usher any survivors into the building. He will drive them in, and kill them where Hanzo cannot interfere. "Die!" Reinhard's barrier shatters. Reaper comes to a stop. Hanzo shoots. The arrow hits, he can see Reaper feel it, but it's skidded off one of the metal plates in his back and lodged to one side.

D.Va slams around the corner. She is too far away for fancy mecha defenses over her friends. She cannot use her defense mechanism to protect Mei, Zarya, and Lucio at the same time. D.Va solves the problem by moving the threat. The mecha's boosters flare. It rockets forward. D.Va springs out the back and leaves it to fly. Reaper ends his attack like a moth on a windshield. "Urhh!" Mist flies behind the mecha as it carries him away. When he lands, it's under the mecha's nose, mist curling in its wake like ink behind a startled squid. A shotgun swings up. That damned booming noise, and the sound of shattering grass, slam through the air. 

It's all so heart-stoppingly fast. Hanzo has only had time to empty his quiver.

In the instant of silence following the last shatters of dropping glass, there follows a heavier, more solid noise. Reinhardt's hammer has dropped from his hand. He has fallen against the wall. His armored shoulder breaks the bricks as his weight topples into it.

Zarya is running away. Is she panicked? There's blood over the side of her armor, the side of her head, but she seems not to care. She's running the way D.Va came, towards the cliff. She heaves her cannon off the side and drops flat. The cannon spins, end over end. The little warm point of light in the middle is glowing, flickering. The light is growing stronger. Hanzo shields his vision from it, trusting Zarya's judgement, and looks away.

Reaper is investigating the empty cockpit that is open before him. Even from here, Hanzo can hear his cheated noise. He doesn't even look at the purple-blue flash of light and the boom. There's the sound of stone cracking. The back of the little bunker caves in. The group is now staggering away from Reaper, but away from the cliff, further towards Lucio. Lucio has wrapped himself around his speakers. He is cranking the sound up.

Reaper turns, walking towards the toppling Reinhardt. Hanzo shoots. The arrow thunks into Reaper's shoulder. He staggers, but there is purpose in his movements. D.Va raises her pistol, barking defiance in furious Korean. Zarya grabs her around the waist, stumbling back.

Reinhardt falls. There is just his armor crashing down, uncontrolled. The light under it dies as the backpiece fails. Twisted and broken pieces buckle under its own weight. There is no twitch. There is no motion. Reaper reaches out an empty hand toward him. It could be an offer to help him up. Hanzo knows what he is reaching for. He grits his teeth. Reaper has claimed Reinhardt's life, but he will come no closer to the rest. Hanzo cannot get there in time. But the dragons will stand between them. " _Ryuu ga waga-"_

Reaper's hand drops as he turns. He is already moving away. D.Va's first shot knocks his head forward. Then he is spreading his arms, drifting mist. Bullets punch through it, powerless.

Lucio is still sobbing in agony, curled up in a ball on the court. Zarya stumbles and drops to her knees. Mei's ice cracks, and she comes out, white. Something is very wrong with her arm. She may have saved her life in her little bubble, but she could not heal all the damage before the ice shield expired.

Winston slams up out of the underground tunnel, 76 and Mercy close behind.

Hanzo hesitates. It's an island. When Reaper leaves, he will leave as a point in the open. The dragons could take him before he moved out of range. But they are all bleeding. Perhaps some are bleeding to death. He cannot buy revenge with more of their loss.

Brigitte comes out behind the three. She stops.

Her hammer hits the ground.

**

Nobody says anything. They have been in flight for hours. It is a veering, low flight, because 76 is not a skilled pilot, and has to make up for his lack of practice in avoiding detection by taking a route that is hard to track. But they could not keep their wounded there. Nobody was even sure that Reaper had left the island. They did not pack. They fled.

Lucio is not conscious. He is blinded. He is curled up, sleeping under Mercy's painkillers. He will feel his own technology betrayed him; it could close wounds, but it could not start to regenerate organs in the same manner as proper biotics. Had he been using those, it is possible some sight could have been restored. McCree is strapped beside him. He is unconscious. Mercy chemically knocked him out when the attack started, before they were even sure Reaper was out there.

Zarya is conscious. Her armor was shredded by chips of Mei's ice and Reinhardt's armor. Reaper fired directly into her shields as he spun. The protective bubble lasted a flickering moment under the onslaught. Her cannon took a direct hit. She said she had just swung it up in front of her face. Her shoulder plate was shattered and the pieces driven into her flesh by another shot. She is missing part of one ear. She is missing two fingers. She was missing four. Mercy found two.

Mei is conscious. Her little robot is destroyed; it spun in front of the muzzle and saved her life. But its shell crushed Mei's forearm and broke her ribs. The arm is wrapped in biotics and coated with a protective splint. It is not clear yet how much can be replaced. Ziegler may yet have to amputate.

Hana is sitting with her jaw clenched shut and her fists tight together, her knees clenched to either side of them, staring at Lucio. Her face is still swollen with tears.

Brigitte is sitting quietly with a bunch of schematics in front of her. There is a tissue clutched in one hand, an old-fashioned pen in the other. She pulls a tape measure out of a drawer, runs it from the point of her elbow to her wrist, and makes another note. The pen bites into the paper. They had to leave his armor. They took his hammer, and his shield generator, and Brigitte would not let them near while she unbuckled his armor and closed his eyes with her own hands. They took his body. But 76's strength was needed to move the wounded, and they did not have time for metal.

"So," says Hana, sharp and brittle, "what's the plan?"

"I am going to Torbjorn," says Brigette. She puts her back to them. She pulls out her headphones, puts them on, and puts her pen to the paper.

"I will go with them," Zarya says. "I need him to build another cannon." Hanzo is about to ask about _them,_ but he remembers the body in the cargo hold.

"I will-"

"I meant," Hana's voice rises, "the plan for Mr. Die Die Die! I smashed him with my mecha! I shot him in the head! Hanzo shot him too! And he just left!"

"You saved at least one life," Hanzo said. "Probably Zarya's. Had he restored himself by killing Zarya, he could have walked through more attacks from me and from Hana." He doesn't look at Mei, because she probably knows she was next. "It would have kept getting much worse."

"Thank you," Zarya adds.

Her chin wobbles. "If I had been there-"

"He chose a time when you were not there," Hanzo says. "I do not know how long he held back. I believe he waited until he knew I had seen him." He pauses. Best to head off the inevitable second-guessing and self-recrimination. "Everyone did as well as they could. If there is to be blame, it starts with me. If I had my communicator, I could have told you where he was."

Zarya lifts her chin. "We would not have listened. Our healer and our friend was injured, alone on the ground. Reaper would only have done worse to him had we held back."

"I am sure 76 can give us drills for what to do next time. Coordinated cover. Or flanking. Or something." Mei is still too pale. She is not a natural warrior. "We all rushed out, bunched up, just like he wanted." 

"We cannot continue to wait until he attacks," Hana answers. "I know that plan. If you don't have to do that plan? It's the worst plan."

"We were careless," Hanzo points out. He does not look at 76. He is too angry to look at 76, who strategized too hard to lead. But he knows he could have done more to move them. "We knew we were exposed. We knew we had isolated ourselves. We did not have a sufficient guard set. We split up and went into confined spaces with few exits. As a team, we gave him that opening." He looks at Winston. "What is it that you were talking about down there?" 

"It's... just a theory." He spreads large hands. "I don't know that this is the best time to be talking about it."

"If it's about Reaper? I think you should be talking about it," Hana says. "Please, without using language that's just going to creep everyone out harder, like saying how freaky and paranormal it is."

"I would like to know all theories," says Zarya.

"Well," Winston says, "is McCree still out?"

"Yes," says Mercy. She has been almost hidden from sight the whole time. She has been crying into Winston's fur.

"It's possible that we can deplete some of the energy from Reaper," says Winston. "Which, theoretically, unless his mind has been entirely remapped as a host - and evidence suggests that something of him is still in there - would restore the possibility of Gabriel Reyes."

"And then we'd have Gabriel Reyes," says Hana. "Is that good? I don't think that's good."

"You smash Gabriel Reyes with your mecha, and he smashes," says 76 over the loudspeakers.

"Aah! How long were you listening?" Mei demands.

"This whole time." 76 is terse. There's the sound of a steady beeping behind his voice.

"How long has that beeping been happening?" Winston asks.

"This whole flight. I meant to ask if it was a problem."

"It's because your safety harness isn't properly fastened. I can come up-"

"I got it. Keep talking."

"So we plan to restore him, to execute him," says Hanzo. "Are you sure McCree is unconscious?"

Mercy gets up. She rolls McCree over, checks the monitors on his wrist and in his mouth, and nods. "Let's just be safe for the next little while." She gives him another shot. "Say whatever you want."

"Well, there are a couple of problems," says Winston. "One is that the material that has taken over his body is restless. Well, it's not made of actual, solidified evil, or anything," he says hastily to Hana's look, "but think of it as a kind of catalyst. It is constantly moving in his body, reshaping it. He simply has too much of it going on. So he is continually suffering."

"Good," says Hana. Nobody argues. That's probably because after seconds of Reaper's work, Lucio is blinded, Mei might still lose half her arm, Hana's mecha is disabled, Zarya is battered and weaponless, and Reinhardt is dead.

"Well, without that, he might not have gotten up determined to tear everything a new asshole," says 76. There is still beeping, only now there is more of it.

Winston starts to explain about metaphysics, energy, mass, life energy, and the intersection of science and mysticism. Hana stops him. "You, Mei, and Dr. Ziegler are the only scientists in here."

"My specialty is the environmental sciences," says Mei. "I don't know anything about... measuring vital force as its own property. And it is hard to think right now." She snuffles.

"He's drowning in it," Ziegler cuts in. "Constantly drowning. If we were to take some of the water out... well, maybe Reyes could breathe, in there."

"That madman that you worked with knew how to make it self-limit, but he didn't write down how he did it," says Winston. "I can't lower the limits. It's always going to replicate back to what it was before. The thing is..." he clears his throat. "If I had to guess, it's related to the spooky effect."

"Winston!" Hana says.

"I know what he's talking about," says Zarya. "Sometimes, two particles can be made to spin in exactly the same way. If you separate them, so there is no more relationship between them, and put them far away, and then affect the spin of one, the other will change its spin the same way. Nobody knows how they know how anything changed, and nobody knows how they make themselves match. That's why it's spooky."

"Yes," says Winston. "So we can't _just_ separate it. Even apart from Reyes' body, as long as it's attuned to him, I believe the rest of the mass will still behave as if all of it is still there. This would result in its latent functionality-"

"What he's working at," 76 cuts in, sounding distracted, as if he is wrestling with the safety harness, "is that we can't just cut the mist and Reyes into little pieces and spread it around the globe. It's still going to behave as if it were in Reyes, and it will stay in existence until someone lets it out. Then it's going to gather, and it's going to look for life to replenish itself. As soon as someone dies, from illness, from accident, from old age, Reyes will be back. Probably more insane." There's a clicking noise, and all the beeping stops. "But if we can take some of it from him, and split it into new hosts, it will still have the same growth limit. If we can get it to accept them, it shouldn't overrun them and drive them mad, too. It's just going to..." they all sit up, staring at the speakers, "...we're not sure."

"Probably make them immortal," Winston agrees. "Also a potential problem."

Hana sticks to the important question. "If Reyes is immortal, why will it be different when I hit him with my mecha?"

"He'll come back, but gradually," says Mercy. "Theoretically, if the host could tolerate it, you could shift more of the power over to them, and it would take Reyes a very long time to come back. He'd be cut off from being able to teleport, or able to drift. He just might become sane again." She hesitates. "If I had to choose, I would take the less-misty Reyes. Even if he's still homicidal, he's not able to infinitely create loaded shotguns."

"Wait," says Zarya. "Which hosts?"

"Ah," says 76. "There's the catch." He clears his throat. "Winston?"

"I'm theorizing that the intense, overwhelming synchronicity Reyes has attained with the mist has to do with his past in the super soldier program," says Winston. "There weren't many other candidates. They were-"

"It was highly illegal, highly dangerous, and dubiously ethical," says 76. "We were given a cocktail of roughly two hundred chemicals. We have no idea which of those primed Reyes for later blending with the, uh, magic death mist - sorry, Hana - or what combination. We aren't sure how to remake some of those. I'm a potential host. McCree, I guess because he had exposure, might be able to tolerate some of it. So's Angela. Same reason."

"Exposure?" asks Hanzo.

"If you operate on enough patients in battlefield conditions, your gloves break, you cut yourself, or you get something in your eye eventually," says Angela crisply. "McCree's blood shows some of the markings of the super soldier project. Since he and Reyes shared water, and doubtless came into contact with each other's injuries, it's predictable."

"Genji and Hanzo, because of their own connections, are possible. I'm not volunteering you, Hanzo, I'm just saying it's possible."

"No," says Hana loudly. "You could all go mad and start chasing us around with shotguns. _No._ "

76 starts to say something, but gives a long, frustrated sigh. Zarya slumps. They are all silent. 

"Isn't this getting ahead of yourselves? How, in all your theorizing, were you planning on getting any mist out of Reaper?" Hanzo asks. "He seems to be getting more confident in his abilities. He seems to be using them more effectively."

"We'd have to capture him."

"How are you going to jail a super soldier who can infinitely create shotguns?" asked Mei. "Just wondering!" Her eyes close, and she sags back. Hana moves to help her get comfortable.

"Yes," says Winston. "So am I. Anyone have any ideas? Just to add them to the drawing board?" 

Hana looks around the group. They're going to have to do something. Reaper launched a solo surprise attack, and nearly shattered them. If he involves Talon in a hit on Overwatch, it will be worse. Reluctantly, she starts trying to think of how to contain a shifting, angry killer made of smoke and shadow.

They won't all survive another round of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok. I'm gonna take a little breather. Just a couple days.


	7. Eddies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When larger currents move, little currents spill after them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little time out for a clearing of the waters.

_Reaper looms like a shadow._

_"All those years." Reaper's armor is familiar by now, second skin. How long has Jesse been here? He couldn't tell anyway, but now he's completely disoriented. "All those years you were panting after me." Is he seeing Reaper? Is he not seeing Reaper? He can't tell. "And what happens, when I finally give in?" Wait, it's Gabriel. His wrist is tied to Gabriel's, just in front of the spiky plates of his armor. He's looking up, and Gabriel is looking down with nothing in his eyes. He speaks with Reaper's voice. "I want you to say it, Jesse."_

Jesse sits bolt upright. Winston drops his datapad. "Fuck!" says Jesse.

"Are you all right?"

"What happened?" There's a trashcan by the bed, and a water bottle. Jesse grabs the bottle, rinses his mouth, and spits. "Where in fuck _am_ I?" He'd been hitting the punching bag. There'd been a noise. Even through the empty space and layer of blast door, that had sounded like a shotgun. He'd turned, and 76 had grabbed him. And there'd been... not a fight. He had one arm, and 76 was on him like a label on a bottle. There'd been a scuffle. And Mercy had swooped in and there'd been a little pinch. They'd left him lying there, listening to noises like all the demons were breaking out of hell, while everything got loopy, started spinning. That's all he's got. "God fucking dammit, what happened?"

"Reaper attacked," Winston says quietly.

"It's bad. How bad?"

Winston's pause tells him someone is dead. "Reaper attacked at close range, and Reinhardt chose to try to hold his barrier to help Zarya and Mei. He bought them time. But he was killed."

"I'd just told him," Jesse says. "I'd just told him."   

"Reaper was at close range," Winston says again. "We've taken a lot of damage. We've split up."

Split up. Jesse runs that through his mind again, trying to look at it from the Blackwatch point of view. He can't concentrate. He feels like something back in the dark, groggy and drugged-

Wait wait _wait._

"He didn't have a chance to get under the landing pad, right? Because if he had a chance to bug the plane-"

"No. He was up on top. Hanzo says he used his powers in a more, uh, refined way than he used to. He probably thought his advantage was overwhelming."

"Improvement is constant," Jesse whispers.

"Hunh?"

"Part of an old soldier's motto. Reyes liked to throw it at me when he wanted me to come spar." Jesse puts his face in his hands. "Of course he's been trying to improve his powers. He wants you all dead."

"I think he got in by dropping out of a cloaked plane without a parachute, then just drifting the last stretch. I've got to admit, I didn't think of that one. It's not a Gabriel tactic. He had no way off until he did something about us."

"It's a Reaper tactic. Reaper is too angry to care about that. He probably pulled back and waited after his first attack,"  Jesse says into his hands.

"Well, we thought there was a possibility he was nearby when we got on the plane."

Jesse shoves his feet off the bed and stands. He has to be still a minute, the vertigo is fierce. There's a window. It's covered with a thick, blue curtain. "Where are we?"

"Iceland. You've been out for about five hours."

 _You have to remember what they did to me. What they could do to you._ It swims up from deep in the back of his brain, from the last time his body felt this kind of light and sick. Five hours. "I feel drugged to _shit_. Fuck Mercy. You guys could've tied me up or somethin'. I'd take a beatin' with a stun rod over this. All I need's warnin' not to clench my teeth." Winston takes his complaints with stoic sympathy. "Right. Fine. Right. How did everyone get away from Reaper?"

"D.Va shoved him away with her mech."

"Seriously? I was expecting him to have seen her practicing acceleration in that. It should have tipped him off. Maybe he is having trouble keeping up with his old self."

Winston shrugs. "Maybe he was too busy scouting for ways in to watch her practice. Or he thought that move was for escape." He frowns. "He did think she was in the mech, after it hit him. Perhaps he thought he'd have more time."

"How did the mech take that?"

"I'm doing repairs."

"I hope Reinhardt got to see it."

Winston's head lowers. "I do too."

Jesse pushes the curtain aside. It's dark out. "Winston, you gotta give my arm back. I'm takin' it as well as I can, but this is bullshit. You know what it's like to have your... to have yourself be sure you've only got one friend, and then snap right back from that? Now my friends are dyin', and I can't help 'em fight. There's shit I can do, and shit I can't do. This is the can't."

 "You're right. There's a lot that we haven't been talking about, and we need to rethink that." Winston sighs. "I'll talk to Morrison when he's back."

"Uh, back? Where'd he go?" Jesse sees Winston look back with the uneasy look of the reluctant secret-keeper. Morrison has told him not to talk about it.  "-you know what? Never mind. Look. I want to be alone for a while."

"Okay. We'll talk, when you want. When they get back, I'll tell them that you want to be alone."

When he's gone, Jesse checks the window. It's not that he thinks he's a prisoner. It's just... what he feels like doing.

 **

_Reaper looms like a shadow._

_He's fallen, and he can't move. He's paralyzed as the shape walks closer. His music is playing, there's a party, everyone is laughing and dancing. Nobody is noticing. Why can't they see him? He's right there, and Lucio can't do anything. Reaper reaches down-_

Lucio jerks awake. There's heavy bandages on his face. Someone's holding his hand, and their grasp moves with him. _"Lucio?"_

_"Just a bad dream, Mama."_

Later, in the silence, when she's sleeping, Lucio takes stock of the little room. It's all he can do. He can hear sounds of a forest: birds, insects, faint through heavy windows. He can hear the little tickings of the mechanized unit strapped to his arm that measures his blood and administers pain medication. He can hear her breathing.

He can hear the door. His imagination tells him Reaper just stepped in, and he hears the little machine whir as it detects an adrenaline dump and moves to counter. "Who's there?" He tries to be as quiet as he can. If his mother doesn't wake up, maybe she'll be left alone.

"Nurse, Mr. Vasquez," says a chipper voice. She has a thick accent, and Lucio has to follow a half-step behind. "Um. Would you like one of our little security Omnics to sit outside? A lot of patients find Omnics threatening, but they-"

"Yes. Please."

"Okay! Let me just get the routine check in, and I'll get that set up."

When she's gone, he reaches up and runs a hand over the bandages. Unwraps just the outer layer. He's not a doctor like Angela (not yet,) so he doesn't want to risk touching where he shouldn't. He starts by moving his hands around his hairline, then carefully crosses his hands in.

Thick knot of partly healed tissue by the right eye socket, ridged down his temple into his scalp. His fingers stop on it. He wonders what his face looks like, how much it's going to hurt his mother if she sees it. He'd better make a new album as soon as he can to pay for a little cosmetic work.

He hears the little unit whir as it counters his stress. He wonders how much _that_ cost. He learned his first aid on the streets, with the basics: hot, clean water and a bag of frozen peas.

"You there, buddy?"

 _Wee-op_ answers him.

Okay.

His mother sits up. Hastily, he starts rewrapping. She makes a clucking noise. Her hands replace his, warm and steady. She sits by him on the bed.

 _bipbip_ warning of a nurse coming in. Lucio patiently waits for her to check him. Thanks her. Leans against his mother. The cloth of her shirt feels good against his face. She smells like home.

_"Are you coming home now?"_

He swallows. He wants to say yes. He wants to tell her that maybe getting just his own patch of ground back is enough. He wants to tell her he'll just put on concerts, raise the money, get one cybernetic eye. At least to get the skin growth and transplant procedures to repair his face.

He shakes his head.

_"Lucio. Please."_

_"Mama,"_ he starts, and can't finish.

_"We are not warriors, baby. We are artists. Come home."_

_"Can I have some music?"_

She moves away. He can hear her rustling through his pockets. She brings back his headphones. He reaches for the little piece that slips into them, trying to set it to a favorite song... but it just lights up to show that. He pops it in place and puts them on. He'll take a random song.

The snicker rolls up from his chest and through his nose.

_"What? What is it?"_

He holds the headphones over. She tugs them cautiously over his ear. _"Good lord! What is this?"_

 _"It's a... classical musician."_ His mama is a trumpet player, who plays the archaic tunes from centuries ago. He can imagine her face.

_"And I'm a mermaid."_

_"A friend of mine gave me this. I was keeping it so I can remix something good from it, to surprise him."_ He can feel his smile die. 

_"Well, I don't think anyone could but you."_

Lucio turns off the sound and sits for a moment.

 _"Mama... I'm famous now. I can't get back like it was overnight, no matter what happened. I'm not a warrior, but I can't just give up. If Vishkar knows that's what it takes to stop me, what are they going to do to Brazil? They'll come right back. And this time they'll do things differently."_ He sniffs. _"Maybe I shouldn't be on Overwatch bases. Maybe I shouldn't be near their fights. But I'm not coming home. I'm going to keep trying to change people's minds. I'm going to see what else this technology can do."_

_"Lucio. It didn't save you."_

_"If I'd had my music on to heal me, instead of to go fast? Or if I'd changed it earlier? Or maybe if I knew what that funny little knob on the side is for? What if I'd already got more people to cover for us, to be willing to hide us? You're right, I don't belong on their bases. I'm staying out of the fighting. But I've got a lot left to do. I want Hana and Zarya and all my friends to be supported."_

A new noise interrupts, a kind of spiralling beep, from the little Omnic at the door. Lucio sits up, recognizing the friendly alert. _"That's a doctor."_

He can hear wheels squeaking a minute later. A hospital cart? Someone knocks on the door. "Hello? Mr. Vasquez? Oh, hello, ma'am. Sorry to interrupt. I was hoping to get a look at my patient, and the nurse said he was just awake."

"I thought I'd met all his doctors."

"Oh, you did meet everyone who's caring for him now. My name's... let's just say it's not as good as it used to be. I know a friend of Mr. Vasquez. We flew together on a lot of medical missions. I may have hung up my wings, a lot of people think I'm dead, actually... but I'm still knocking around."

"Oh," says Lucio. Well, where else would they send him, but to some place where former Overwatch could lend a hand? They probably shouldn't talk much about that. "Well, it's nice to meet someone else."

"You won't be ready to be a patient of mine for a while. We'll have to let the nerves heal all the way before I know what I'm dealing with. But since I'm a bit of an expert in cybernetics, and I can get a little creative when prosthetics are needed, well... I thought you might want to consider your options."

Oh. _Oh._ "Uh, is creative good?" Lucio asks.

Her tone goes conspiratorial. "Do you want to be able to see sound? Because I think I can add a detachable visor that can let you see sound." She pauses. "I mean, that's going to cause a hell of a headache while you're getting used to it. And if you use the visor, you might want to deactivate your visual implants, because otherwise you're going to have different cortexes of your brain fighting over what's going on. But I've never had a patient who might want it, so I'm excited."

"Let's just... let's just start with the visual implants? Can you tell me about that?"

But he puts it aside for later.

It does kind of sound like fun.  


	8. Hadopelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the water, deep as hell.

Just one.

It's been a while since self-disgust has been part of the chorus, but Reaper isn't surprised. He puts aside the one thing he's already considered, the fact that occurred to him before he first withdrew from the inevitable volley of dragons. It can wait until he's turned over all the other pieces.

Reaper leans back against the wall. Reinhardt. Far past his time. Dangerous, capable of spearheading an attack and ushering it straight into Talon's objective. Reaper took his life, accepted the red, and pocketed the bounty. But it was still a failure. If the mecha hadn't knocked him out of position, he'd had plans for that destabilized cannon and its crunchy shell. There was a lot more he'd been planning to do in that first impact.

Reaper was aiming to overwhelm, to send Overwatch reeling, shattered, grieving, and off balance. They're running, but they still have purpose. They're probably forced to split, but it's by choice, not the fracturing he had in mind. Grieving? Yes, but not as much as he'd planned. Off balance? That's all he's got. If he fails the followup, it's all he's getting.

The Japanese archer. McCree. The Russian cannoneer. The Korean pilot. The environmental scientist. He tosses those up in the air. Anything?

Problem: since he'd been planning on using the archer as the surviving witness, Reaper might have solidified Shimada's loyalty to Morrison. Perhaps the others will attack him for not being ready to assist. Probably not. Reaper rolls his claws on the metal floor. No sign of McCree, besides that glimpse of him one-armed and escorted. Maybe they secured him early. Maybe he moved too overtly. Maybe his traitorous devotion is Morrison's.

The thought of McCree has freed a tumult in his mind. Reaper shoves it back. Their unfinished dance can wait. He isn't here.

He waits. More answers flow into the calm. The Russian cannoneer: soon to be active, but not a threat at the moment, gun destroyed, with a good hard reality check about the usefulness of her shield. The Korean pilot: the same, unless he's missed his estimate of how easy it is to repair her machine. The little environmental scientist: hopefully, now driven off to play on ice floes and stay out of Talon's way. She's proven resilient already. It will probably take more. The sound medic: Reaper doesn't care, he's a musician motivated by optimism. He'll find another cause when Overwatch gets too difficult. Maybe it is now. 

Nothing useful there. Whatever he's set into play with them, he doubts it will set them up for the shattering. He can't even be pleased with the outcome of buying Talon a little peace and quiet to work. He always knew that would be the result.

They'll never use that hidey-hole again. He has some scraps to use next time he drags an ex-Blackwatch agent from their hole and makes his offer. Besides those, he's exhausted the new possibilities. Back to that happy little thought he'd tucked aside.

Angela Ziegler likes to keep her cupboard stocked. She also can't use the regular type of biotics in that fancy staff of hers; the inner workings are too delicate. She has to use the best, the most carefully processed, the most refined, and it has to be carefully prepared to match the staff's energy source. She's got a few suppliers. Reyes happened to know one was loyal enough to deliver to her, no questions asked, as much as she wants, short notice. Reaper shut their other medic down. It's all on her. He hit hard enough that she'll have drained her staff. She'll have broken out the rest of her supplies trying to triage everyone at once. And now, wherever she is, she's crushed under responsibility. She's anxious to be ready for the next crisis. She'll think it's a short run. She'll try it.

Good. She can have it. In a solitary strike, Reaper did not complete his goals.

Time to use a team. 

**

Is it just Genji, or does going to meet an old friend sound insane, right now? "Like hell you're going," says 76 as he wonders. Good.

" Of course I'm going. And I'm going now. We don't know what Reaper's planning. We have to be ready. While he's repositioning, I have a chance to move."

"Gabriel's too nimble a strategist for this to be an opening. It's too dangerous. We could need you here. We have one medic for the time being."

Something grips her. Self-doubt? Self-reproach? "And we need me to be ready. I'm not." Arms folded over her chest, head bowed, she looks small but resolute. "I am done with failure. I am done with loss."

"You're done with risky decisions!"

"Jack, I was already running low on biotics after stocking up some fields for you. I had to assist with the injuries after we saved Jesse. McCree needed help with his withdrawal. I had to purge some of the older stores. If I don't go, I can do nothing." Angela Ziegler draws herself up. " _You can't stop me_."

"You will not go alone," says Genji.  

"I'll fly us." Jack gets up. "Get your stuff and get on the plane. Now! If I have to, I'm keeping the window of opportunity tight as hell."

**

Even through the roil of the mist in his body, even through the constant erosion and remaking of his flesh, even through the feeling of his lungs breaking apart, rolling out his mouth, sifting back in through his nose, the news from the Talon lookout tastes like sweet. Fucking. Victory.

Even something this delicious can fall apart. Reaper rocks from side to side to encourage his muscles to reform all the way. He'll need them. But he's not going to spring it too early. He waves at his second to shut the fuck up. Waves again: really, shut the fuck up. Reaper saunters up one flight of stairs to the company president's office. The man is sorting papers, leaving them for his secretaries in the morning.

He looks up.

Reaper drags him to the elevator alive. The man thinks he's being kidnapped (second time, Mercy and Jack saved him the first) and Reaper kicks him to his knees in front of the door. Gives his orders. Listens to his trained and almost completely silent (he can hear that one, and if he survives, the clumsy sack of shit is going straight back into Talon's general pool) team move into position.

The building has large, pretentious columns in the high-ceilinged lobby. It has a railing all the way around the first floor, just waiting for gunmen on the second floor to come to the edge and fire down. It has floor-to-ceiling glass windows. It has a deep, carefully landscaped lawn, with bushes and hedges outside. The furniture in the lobby is heavy, but it's all set low, bad cover. Thanks to a distaste for the noises of the city outside, the soundproofing is exquisite. If someone were to start shooting a gun in the lobby, nobody would know it on the street. The security system would definitely go off, but Reaper knows his team's capabilities, and he gave one woman an order. That one is undoubtedly standing in the security center over the bodies, easing the last alarm to shutoff.

He can see the ninja detect the team coming behind them as they enter the big, main doors. That's not a surprise. That's why Reaper has overwhelming force: no matter how many he answers, eventually he will be shot to pieces.  He can see the ninja stop. He's preparing to drop his smoke bomb. Next, he'll relocate, and when the soldiers at the door come in, he'll start tearing them to shreds. Reaper is not sacrificing them early. He hits the down button.

The doors open. Reaper shoves his prisoner into sight. He gives it just long enough for Mercy and Jack to recognize the man. Mercy, to his amusement, automatically hits him with  a stream of biotics from the staff in her hand. Then Reaper pulls the trigger, and the only clear thing about the man is that he had a nice suit.

Reaper picks up the life in one hand as he steps through the doors. He can feel his skin growing back evenly. It feels good. He feels so generous, Jack can say whatever he wants.

"You didn't have to do that." It's the third thing he expected. Begging for Angela's life is the first. But Jack stepped between Reaper and the medic, so it would be redundant, even for the boy scout.

"He chose it, when he helped you." Reaper waves it off. "Trade me, Morrison." Reaper was holding Morrison's identity as a little ace for when he needed to spur Talon, and even the heads of some of his mercenaries turn. But he wants Morrison to hear an offer like he used to say it. He means it, and he doesn't want to waste time convincing him. "One for one." He can see Morrison take that in.

"That's not a call I can make." Reaper rolls his eyes, temper flaring. He should trade a prisoner for a follower, but Morrison was always squeamish about that kind of thing. If he weren't, maybe Reaper would have followed him, back-

Rage later. "Then let me talk to him. Let him make it." Reaper holds out a hand. "It's all you have now. I pick who lives, but I will pick one." Mercy. The other two are too dangerous to let a shot pass. He'll have other shots at Mercy. Or, when Jesse is ready to do his damn job, he'll send Jesse.

"He's just been through an abduction and the traumatic death of his friend," says Angela. "He's sedated." She's bristling with anger, a doctor refusing to hand over her patient.

Reaper's patience, and good humor, evaporate. It seems as if he's always doing things the hard way. He got ready for that. He flicks his fingers.

The mercenaries had orders to start with the ninja, of course. He's the most versatile, with the best chance of escape. He is the most dangerous if he gets his focus together enough to call on that damn dragon of his. Reaper raises his shotgun, just so Morrison can't tear up the weight of numbers his team will need.

Reaper's intervention is necessary. The ninja fights like hell. He's across the lobby twice in flashes of green. He even flips a little bladed fuck-you Reaper's way. It stings a lot more at close range than it did when he had more distance, back in the canyon. The cyborg carves through men. With his blade and synthetic muscle, he deflects shots straight back through armor. He crosses and crisscrosses the space, a swift, constantly moving target. He finds openings, moments of shelter. Mercy's healing beams hit him whenever she has a chance.

But in the end, he's all elegance and finesse. Reaper brought sheer firepower. Genji Shimada can't stand forever in the volley. He goes down in a pile of parts and leaking gels and fluids. It's an Omnic's death, scrapped and splattered. Reaper is pleased. He can see the red spinning and stuttering in the air. He doesn't stop to collect. Morrison's will do.

Morrison's been busy too, and the staff has worked on him. But they're outflanked, surrounded, outgunned. It's so fucking perfect Reaper doesn't want it to end, but Morrison takes too many hits to stand. Reaper steps up to it. He finishes it with one shotgun blast. Morrison's face is still together. His chest is not. And, bonus, Reaper even has some of his highly trained team left. They're lowering their guns, moving to watch.

Reaper lowers his fingers down into the little red globe left over the body. Taking it is like sliding into a warm bath. The mist has quit shedding through his skin; it's just bleeding through his nose and mouth. After Reinhardt, then Mercy's friend, then this, he almost feels his old self. There are a lot of things he can say.

Hang on. This is regret. He's not sure where all this regret is coming from. Or these words that are goodbyes, in their own way. But they're lost in his rasping throat. In the end, it's just... right, salving down the hurt to where he can almost, almost breathe easy again.

"This is how it should have been," Reaper isn't sure he's even talking to the mess on the ground. He steps away. He can't see Angela clearly. There's a pillar in the way. Reaper strolls back in front of the elevator and looks at her.

Angela is crying, huge, gasping sobs, shaking, eyes wide. It's what he expected. It's such a boring turn that he's almost impatient with her. He waits to see if she's going to draw her pistol, or if she's going to offer to trade Jesse for a chance to get her survivors where Talon can't find them, or if she's just going to start screaming.

Angela's breath catches. Through iron will, she gulps her breath back, forces it even. Her shaking stops. Her expression goes stony, resolute. She swings the staff down at him.

He hadn't expected that. The surprise is a little present to open. Is she about to try to heal him to death?

But her glowing, prehensile biotic field latches onto the air over the headless body of her presidential little friend. He's seen that before. The staff seems to find the marker of the passage of life for longer than he can. She knows where the red faded away. She activates her suit and flies through the air towards him. Reaper can't pass it up, it's going to be _hilarious_ , he levels a shotgun so she can fly into it. But halfway there she drops the beam and her feet tap to the floor.

She rolls to the side, her back to a column. She's surrounded by her dead friends, and all she can think to do is jump around and cower. He shakes his head. He's sure some of his men on the upper floor can get her in their sights, so he doesn't bother to move. He starts to lift a hand to one. He can see rays of light spill over the floor as she taps the butt of her staff on the floor and lifts it high.

"Helden sterben nicht!"

It feels like explosions going off. Tame? explosions. Of life. He can feel energy surging and spiraling, see it in the air. It's like the mist in his body, he can feel it perk like a curious puppy and vibrate at the warmth. The glow clusters around where the red dots were.  It fills his sight with gold. It wraps the bodies on the ground. It lifts them up, pulling Shimada back together, closing Morrison's ribcage. It's incredible, it's beyond comprehension; she's not just reknitting flesh and metal, she's re-channeling, pulling everything back to the state in which it last worked. As if she's moving everything back to the impact they left in time, just before their life spilled out in red.

Jack Morrison settles on his feet, gasping air. Genji Shimada cries out with an inhuman noise. It sounds sweetly familiar to Reaper, like an echo of the trail he's walked. Mercy's staff, depleted, falls on the lobby floor and shatters in a spray of glassy shards. Glass, and sifting ashes, texture like the flow in his veins, but silver and gold. They came from a purer burn.

She got it right.

She _got it right._

Hate and disbelief war for supremacy. Neither wins. Both spill out before he knows he'll speak. "You've got to be kidding me." He hears the stutter of her little blaster gun. A soldier falls over the railing and crashes to the ground.

The two, still filled with the determination they had before they fell, have collected themselves. Reaper has not.

"Ryuujin no ken wo kurae!"

"I've got you in my sights!"

_Que la chingada._

**

They are all packed shoulder to shoulder in the cockpit. There is plenty of room in the rest of the plane, but nobody wants to be alone. Nobody wants to let a friend out of sight. Morrison keeps rubbing a hand over his chest. Mercy took a bullet in the last little stretch, and is still healing herself and wiping up blood. Genji is silent.

"Mercy."

She strokes fingers over smooth skin, as if reassuring herself. "Yes?"

Genji is silent. His visor swings back and forth as they continue:

"You brought us back from the dead."

"Yes."

"Both of us. I saw Genji die. I saw that shotgun come down at me. I saw it go off. I felt a train hit me."

"Yes."

"And the man Reaper shot the head off of. Whatsisface. He had his head back on. His whole head. Even his hair. Even his haircut."

"Yes."

"And we're not smoke-based killing machines."

"Yes."

"Not even him. The man who's very confused, because he missed all the soldiers appearing and the gunfight in his lobby, and thinks he had some kind of very bloody seizure, because he was scurrying back into the elevator while his _head_ was still scattered all over the damn floor."

"Yes."

"And all those Talon mercenaries that Genji and I worked so hard to put down, they stayed down, even though I died, and came back, on one of their corpses."

"Yes."

"Did you _know_ that would work?"

"Um..."

"Mercy!"

"No!"

Jack Morrison slams his forehead into his hands. The plane wobbles, and he jerks up and grabs the controls. Genji is silent. "We're making new rules," says Jack. "New rules for what we do when we go on these little milk runs. We're making new rules, and we're _never breaking them again_."  

"Yes."

There's a long, long silence.

Genji lets a deep breath out. He sucks a deep breath in.  The night flies by outside.

"He'd won," Morrison said at last, when he's lowering the landing gear. "He wanted us dead. He planned for it. He went for it. He got it. And you took it away. Angela, you're not safe now. We weren't safe before, but now, he's..."

Angela sits quietly, nodding. Genji is silent.

Finally, Morrison starts walking himself through it. "When I think about what I know about Reaper's thinking, I think seeing you raise me is the worst thing I can imagine. He probably preferred Genji cutting him up with a dragon." Genji can see him grasp what he just said. They both are still trying to understand the stretch of time just after they found themselves on their feet. "Well done, Genji."

Genji is silent.

"I couldn't not do it," she says. "I could _not._ We've lost too much. We lost him. We lost Reinhardt. I watched him kill you. I watched him kill you both. I couldn't stop you from dying."

"Angela... you raised us from the dead."

"And you did not fall again. If it takes using that kind of power to save you, I am using that kind of power." She throws her hands up. "What else could I have done?"

Genji is silent.


	9. Mesopelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A failed mission has led to more complications.

Arrowsmithing is exhausting. Hanzo lifts his ponytail, letting the breeze across the roof sift across the back of his neck. He is in the shade of the awning, but there is still ample light to work. The sunlight glares off the clay walls around him. They are above a shoe store. A _shoe store._ The store is still working. It is still in business. The owners were not aware of the group slipping through the back alley into the tiny, hidden elevator. The proprieter is ancient. They can go up a level to the roof, hidden in plain sight, or down to three levels of emergency living quarters and a little medical supply stash. The roof has an old, treated cloth awning. Hanzo is working here, because the lighting downstairs is terrible, tapped imperfectly off the electrical grid.

His bottle of sake sits open, but is mostly ignored. Every single piece has to be perfect. Each arrow is as good as he can make it; any one of them might be needed to invoke the dragons. Any one of them could be the one that saves his life, that secures a victory. Past that, he is crowdwatching. He cannot look as if he is looking too hard, but he wants to know if any particular attention is being given to his building.

Genji crashes into his chair back. An arrowshaft rolls across the floor. The half-completed head springs apart. Heads turn in the street below. "You idiot! What have you done?" But Genji isn't letting go. Anger turns to confusion. "Release me." He settles down beneath the table, where they cannot be seen from the street or the building beside, as Genji draws back, knees folded like a child. "What is this?"

 _"We are down another healer,"_ says Genji after a moment.

_"Ziegler? Ziegler died too?"_

_"No."_ Genji is trembling, he realizes. Shaking like a leaf. Hanzo has not seen him like this since...

_"She's captured?"_

_"No,"_ Genji snarls impatiently. He looks down. _"We were attacked by soldiers, and there were too many to fight. Reaper was there. He knew we were coming. I was dead."_

_"She betrayed us?"_

_"No! Shut up and let me tell it! I was dead! I died!"_ Hanzo stares. He opens his mouth to ask a question, but the words are loose now. _"I was shattered by bullets. I had no more throwing stars. I saw my sword break. I saw my second blade skipping across the floor. I saw my limbs splintering, I felt my body torn, I took a shot through my visor and everything went dark. I felt the dragon that has always been with me swimming away. I felt as if I were drifting, felt a great peace... and then I saw gold, and the room was back, and I drew my sword and we killed our way out."_

Well.

 _"76 had many questions, and it appears that-_ " he stops himself. Apparently he does not wish anyone who does not know Japanese to be able to pick up names. _"-the blonde doctor is the one who reversed my death. This can happen now!"_

Hanzo reaches out and grabs his forearms. It's not conscious, and once done, he has to decide what to say. _"You were the one who told me that there was a great conflict. You were the one who told me that it was time to pick a side."_

_"I know. I remember. I had already chosen. But I was not expecting this. I... I was ready for death. I thought I was ready for anything."_

Hanzo takes a minute to think about it. Genji's resolve, Genji's purpose, has been made with awareness that what he does cannot be undone. He has done terrible things. He has fought a terrible war. Now the most serious personal consequence can be done and undone as many times as Ziegler can manage it. Hanzo supposes that if he had found out like that, he would also be shaken.

 _"Go again, then. Find this teacher you speak of so highly, and tell him."_ Hanzo shrugs. _"You did not need me before."_ He does not call Genji brother, because that kind of aggression is not... not needed. Genji is reeling. _"I will be left to hold together what is here... as before."_

His accusation hits home. Genji jerks, sitting upright. _"You take too much on yourself!"_

 _"Who else is there,"_ now he uses it, _"brother?"_

 _"76 is-"_ Genji stops himself. There are things that cannot be spoken clearly in the open. _"The former leader."_

Hanzo drops his voice low. _"Morrison?"_

Genji nods. His visor's stare is unrelenting. Hanzo knows why. Hanzo was robbed of revenge on the figurehead that drove the spear into his family's destruction. By the time he had recovered his freedom, by the time he was done mourning the dead, by the time he had given up twisting together the frayed ends of his former empire, by the time he set out... Morrison was dead. Genji is throwing it in his face.

Hanzo could track him down now. Morrison is distracted. Morrison is thinking of many things, pulled in many different ways, no doubt frantic. There would be no chance to dodge the dragons. They would vanish into the wall, into the earth.

The people they have held together would scatter, and their plans to stop Reaper would be dust in the wind.

 _"Go,"_ he says. _"Find your teacher. Collect your thoughts. I will do what a man must do."_

He watches Genji out of sight. And then he starts to plan. He might be forced to work with the group, but he will not readily place himself under Jack Morrison's service.

Besides, given the spectacular missteps by their distracted leader, he could do better.

**

Mercy is ravaging the pathetic shelves for anything that would do good. They have already distributed their wounded, settling them into other hands on each stop of the flight, changing vehicles, switching routes, scattering again. It is still all-out flight. Reaper has resumed his relentless search, and this time, he will be nothing but purpose.

"What is the new plan?" Hanzo asks Mercy.

"My backup staff doesn't have any biotic energy at all right now," she says, not looking up. "The only one left that could keep us alive in a bad firefight is Zenyatta. He is busy assisting with a negotiation of Omnic tensions in Kazakhstan. If Am-" she clears her throat. "If another idea occurs to me, I will mention it."

"That was not an answer."

"The plan is," she slams the lightless golden staff down and looks up, "I get my high-quality biotics as soon as possible, so we survive a run-in with the insane, homicidal mercenary. I don't know how to do that without running into the insane, homicidal mercenary. He knows it's what I have to do."

"I'll ask Morrison."

"Will you get McCree?" Morrison asks on seeing him. Morrison's tone is soft and even. He clearly has something on his mind. It had better be the plan.

McCree is sleeping, half-naked in his cubbyhole, blankets strewn half to the floor, head smashed into his pillow like a dog on a couch. He is clearly having nightmares. Hanzo can hear him muttering something, sleep-slurred and indistinct. The feeling in it puts the hair up on the back of his neck. It is a stream of pleas, a litany. He does not want to know. He backs up. There is a big trash bag full of blank papers and moldy fabric they were going to throw in the alley. He grabs that. He steps back in, walks up to the bed, holds it up in both hands, and kicks the built-in bedframe as hard as he can.

Predictably, McCree lunges, trying to kill the trash bag. He fails to get a grip on its puffiness with one arm, and falls. Hanzo expected him to be able to catch himself, and he does, muscle corded up his shoulder and into his back. "What in hell?"

"Morrison wants to speak to you," Hanzo says. "About the other insane, homicidal mercenary." He turns and walks out. McCree turns up in the tiny kitchen shortly after, unshaven, rumpled, tired.

"Mornin'," he says. "So... I said yesterday mornin' that I didn't want to be disturbed. An' now I am. So it's important?"

Morrison pushes McCree some coffee. "I know this has been hard. I miss him, too."

"I was havin' a nightmare anyway," McCree says, settling into a chair. Hana Song comes in through the other door. She is wearing jeans and a plain shirt, but in concession to the time, her feet are in bunny slippers.

"We met Reaper."

The coffee cup stops in the air. They can see McCree start a headcount.

"Mercy's fine," Morrison says quickly.

"We?" asks McCree. "Who in fuck is we?"

"Myself, Genji, and Mercy. We survived." Hanzo clears his throat. "We survived," Morrison says more sharply. "We are now out of biotics."

"And our trust is damaged, and Genji has left," adds Hanzo.

"Shimada, what crawled up your ass and died?"

Nobody has ever asked him that before. Hanzo is fortunate that he has at least heard the question asked of others. "Perhaps I am tired of unending battles, of business never put to rest. Perhaps bad news is made worse by dragging it out."

"I'm putting one thing to rest." He turns to McCree. "You're getting your arm back. Reaper offered to trade one of us for you. He wouldn't do that if he thought you still might be incoming. So. He must have not gotten far enough in however he was controlling you. You'll need your arm."

McCree has gone an odd color. The flush has died out of his face, leaving tanned skin. He drinks coffee without blinking and puts the cup back down slowly. From the way he hisses air between his teeth, he just realized how hot it was. "Right. Got it. Arm."

"Why's he so interested in capturing you?" Hanzo asks. "He wants the rest of us dead."

He can see the little flicker as McCree's face goes from stunned to intentionally blank. He can see McCree turn to check if Hana is still in the room. "Reyes liked to know he was right," says McCree. "Reaper's worse." 

"Right about you?" Hanzo pushes.

"He needs an audience." McCree drinks more coffee. Hanzo has the distinct feeling that he's hiding something, probably a lot of somethings. He glances at Morrison, who has a similar look in the set of his mouth. But Morrison doesn't push. Hanzo is unsure of the wisdom in not pushing.

It makes him annoyed enough to push, himself. "We learned something from that ill-chosen trip. Mercy can resurrect the dead, without making them like Reaper." The cup thunks down on the table so hard that steaming coffee sloshes everywhere. McCree jumps up before it runs off the table into his lap.

"I can't, at the moment," says Angela from the door. The place is so tiny that he and Genji had the only private conversation possible. "I need biotics."

"Raise the _dead_?" McCree asks, looking up from damming coffee with napkins, bewildered. "What dead? Who died?" Hanzo points at Morrison.

Morrison glares at him. "Shimada. I don't want to throw you out now, not when you're in the wrong part of the globe, with few resources to survive on your own."

"I don't want you to," Hanzo says. "But I think there are too many secrets, and too many lies, here. We do not know that whatever McCree is holding back won't hurt us. We don't know that Mercy's resurrection has been flawless. You might still change, and we might not be able to tell, given how withdrawn from the team you have been. Reaper is-"

"Furious," says McCree. "He'd be furious. He thinks he was experimented on anyway. Now he knows that Mercy was close to getting it right, it's just going to make him more certain she meant to fuck him up. An' hey, 76, fuck you for dyin' and not tellin' me about it. I'm your teammate."

He wants to be seen as someone who'll say the hard things. "Genji too," says Hanzo innocently. McCree stares. For a moment, Hanzo thinks he has finally sandblasted through that drawling charm.

But McCree's eyes narrow, like he's seen something he doesn't like. He looks into his coffee cup and sighs theatrically. "Least I still got enough coffee for this bullshit." He looks away like Hanzo isn't there, and his voice gentles. "What's tearin' you up, Angela? You've got to know that what he thinks ain't your fault."

Damn it. Blackwatch really must have been a snake pit.

Ziegler looks up. "I can do nothing about how he sees it. I know. I'm just trying to figure out what contacts are safe to use."

"Contacts? For more biotics? Fuck that. It's gotten much too dangerous for that. Reaper's got Talon waiting to pounce by every one of 'em."

She shakes her head. "If I don't have biotics, I can't do any good. Hospitals would have too small a store to use."

"Sugar," says McCree gently to her, "a man was once asked why he robbed banks. He said, 'that's where the money is.' Don't try to rob little storefronts. Go where the biotics is."

"I told you, I can't use-"

"So don't talk to the people at the counters. Don't fuck around tryin' to get in the vaults. Get your ass in the mints. You gotta know where a factory is that makes 'em." They all look at Jesse McCree. He just goes on like he doesn't notice, a broad grin on his face. "An' if you don't, someone else in Overwatch has to, because that'd be a high-fuckin'-priority target.  Overwatch would shield the shit out of it." 

"Thanks, McCree," says Morrison. "I... I wouldn't have thought of that."

"Blackwatch. He might've." McCree jerks a thumb at Hanzo. Hanzo nods. Running a crime empire, for as long as he did, has given him a certain perspective that others are lacking. Like Morrison, who wears his guise stubbornly, but not easily.

"I would have considered trying to rob a warehouse. Reaper would expect that. He might even have the resources to plan for it. He will not expect us to go into a factory and shove a tap into a vat," says Hanzo. "Security will be overwhelming."

"We hear ya, sugar, we'd never expect something easy." Hanzo believes he was just disrespected. McCree rubs his shoulder above his missing arm as Morrison snorts. Hanzo's more sure he was just disrespected. But McCree goes on. "You said 'us.' You're coming?"

"Yes." Hanzo hesitates, although he is careful not to show his caution. He is undermining Morrison, highlighting his mistakes, and establishing trust in Hanzo's own judgement. That's fine. But he's about to push it, and it could backfire.

But he has thrown his lot in, he has shouldered responsibility his brother could not, and he will carry as much as he can. "Provided that everyone agrees that lies and secrecy are self-defeating. No more secret projects, no more hidden agendas. If we agree that Reaper will put his focus on destroying us, now, we must agree that he will turn us on ourselves. After all, he knows how dangerous we each are."

"I agree," says Mercy softly.

"Uh." McCree blinks when they all look at him. "Sure," he says.

"Fine," says Morrison. He does not take the moment to give away his secret. By doing so, he walks right into it.

"And that's Jack Morrison," says Hanzo, banging the trap shut behind him.

Song squeaks. McCree's coffee spills on the floor. Ziegler doesn't bat an eyelash. Hanzo miscalculated. But judging by the other two, and by the tightening of Morrison's lips, that was good enough.

**

The elevator doors open. They're down the last level. It's a tiny workshop and lab. Winston has to take the elevator alone, and suck his gut in before the door will close. "Hey, Winston," Jesse greets the gorilla.  

"Son of a bitch!" Morrison bangs his fist on the elevator door as it closes. "That goddamn over-polished, whiny prick!"

"A lowdown, dirty dog," Jesse agrees. "He's so corkscrewed, that fermented rice shit must go through three revolutions before it hits his belly."

"Uh... did something bad happen?"

"Shimada decided it was a good time to undermine Morrison here's leadership. You knew, right? An' we're here to just slap my arm where it goes, if'n you'd be so kind." McCree tips his hat.

"Of course I knew. I'm glad the pretending is over. I had to practice calling him 76 for a week." Winston brightens. "I'd love to reattach your arm! Just sit down."

"You called me 'Seventyson' for two days." 76 sighs. "He's not all wrong. I got so sidetracked in," he hesitates, "Mercy's hopes that I lost track of what I should be doing with my team. He was right, trying to push us to go. That probably made a mark on him."

"Neat little play he made, though. Kind of cute, runnin' for president on a platform of no politickin'."

Morrison has to laugh. "I guess I'm better off warned."

"Hey, speaking of which, you did need to get knocked down just a peg. Not as a leader or nothin', as a sharer of information. Winston, did you know what Mercy-"

"You'd better let me break it."

"Sure," says Jesse. "Hey Winston, you want to just let me hold that for a minute?"

Forty-five seconds later, the desk is upside down, the chalkboard is lodged in the ceiling, and Winston is sitting with his head in his arms.

"Good call," Jesse adds. It's not that Winston was even very angry, it's just that there's not much room for a startled gorilla. He had his mechanical arm clutched to his chest, but he rests it on his knee.

"I don't like to think what it could have done to you," Winston says. "Three people at once? How did she know that would work? How did she know someone wouldn't half come back and die again? She's gone too far.  Again!"

"You thought it would work, right?" Jesse checks.

"The theory was perfectly sound. Of course, a lot of theories are, but turn out to be just a pile of banana peels." Winston puts his glasses back on. "After Reinhardt died, she wanted to have the changes made, and, of course, I obliged her. But I thought she was going to test it on cattle first, or something else bigger than a human. In safe conditions, where any... problems could be contained."

"We die faster than cattle if we make reckless moves," Jack says with a shrug. "Hanzo's right to second-guess me. First I make a basic tactical blunder, then I let the medic pull us out of position. No more. Winston, is it going to keep working?"

"We'd better visit a slaughterhouse." 

"About that. Her staff broke."

"Well, that was expected. The chemical reactions required-" Winston clears his throat as they both assume blank looks in preparation for science. "Well, they'd change the composition of the metal in the staff, rendering it brittle, and would destroy both the energy source and any biotics fueling the staff's... fueling the staff. She does have a backup. I'll have to make another."

"So in order to make this one useful, so we can kill the same cow four times, we need to get her biotics to fuel the process. An' maybe a couple backups to go on, if you can get 'em in time." Jesse swallows. 

"You all right?" 

"Yeah. Yeah. You know what this technology could do, raisin' the dead? You know what Reaper could do with it? Raisin' someone, over an' over, just to kill 'em again? Mercy don't know what she let loose. Again." Jack is disturbed by this, and the swiftness with which Jesse came up with it. He'd known Blackwatch tortured. He'd known McCree was, by background, dangerous. He shouldn't be surprised. 

"Good point. I just have a partially assembled third one, so I'll leave that one as it is. Mercy will just have to heal us like usual. Let's go back to not dying. That's what we should be doing anyway." He stops. "We're getting biotics? Is there a plan for that?"

"It's only the best plan ever," Jesse says, putting a fist on his hip and tilting his head to one side. "Why don't we crack open the records stored here, and just see what's in the region? Successful industrial plants stay good for decades. We should be able to find what we need even if it ain't  updated. Pick out a likely little biotics manufacturing plant. We'll saunter in, skim a little off, take our leave." Winston's jaw drops. "They'll never notice."

 **

"Okay," McCree says. "We're in."

"Copy. Stand still." Winston is sitting outside. Hana, carrying Mercy's staff, is at 76's... Morrison's... elbow.  Mercy is carrying a bunch of vials. McCree is carrying a bunch of vials. Hanzo is holding two clamps meant to attach to the walls. They're all wearing masks meant to foil face-detecting technology. Winston is going to be giving them a variety of cover stories as they move, and some of the plant's security will be able to tell if the things he claims are cleaning supplies have faces.

"I've disguising you as pots of raw materials, customized to your weight. Your tracking is going to start as soon as you put a foot on the floor, so stay on the doorsill until you can move your weight onto the floor. Try not to swing your weight too hard from one foot to the other. Be sure not to take big steps, or else the pressure sensors under the floor will start throwing errors. Just don't get packed, distilled, put on a conveyor belt, or picked up until I can turn your weight into service drones."

"Pots?" McCree asks. "I'm not seein' any wear marks. Anywhere." They follow his gaze. Every metal surface in sight is coppery in color. There are padded mechanical pincers on arms folded into the wall. There are little floor-cleaning drones scuttling here and there. There's a warm, green glow stretching down the hallway.

"Move," says 76. "We don't want the machinery deciding we need to be unpacked." The team minces down the hallway. Hanzo stays on the metal sill, assessing which way he wants to go.

"Winston, how big are the steps we aren't supposed to be taking?" McCree asks. Hanzo snorts, leaping up to the wall and running. He clamps himself to the wall at the doorway and leans down to look out, ignoring their responses.

The factory is built on the vertical. Copper-lined tubes are swirling up and down huge central columns. The tanks they want, distribution of high-quality product, hang in the middle of the air. One bulbous side of the smaller ones rests set into the columns. Hanzo was expecting the glowing gold tanks, of varying intensity. Brighter flecks swirl and dissolve in them. There are also red, blue, and green tanks dotted up and down the columns. Little service platforms swirl like bees. They ascend or descend first to the colored tanks, then thrum to the gold.

"Shit," says McCree. "They're making their own little pots. Or envelopes."

"What?" asks Winston.

"They're packaging the biotics in colored gel," says Angela. "The platforms are flying up to the tanks, empty. A weighted platform will never be taken near them."

"We will have to ascend the columns," Hanzo says. "I may have to harm one of the Omnics."

 "Hang on," Hana says. "I see a gap in the copper sheathing around that column. I think I can climb up to the bend in the pipe." She sounds very uncertain. Her face is still hidden by her mask.

"Are you all right?"

"I don't like heights." She swallows. "I can do it."

"It's a narrow gap," Hanzo says.

"I'm smallest. Can you get me out there?"

"Everyone is standing still a bit too long," Winston says. "It's getting harder to suppress the alerts. There should be a capped pipe near your position. Try holding on that."

The first thing to go wrong is a tiny tube in the wall nobody noticed. McCree's mechanical hand doesn't have the sense of touch a flesh hands does, and he snags it with his fingertips. It snaps, and begins trickling a stream of fluid. They turn their heads at the sound of droplets hitting on the wall.

"I've got a pressure drop," Winston says. "Can you decrease it? It's nonvital. It won't get any attention if it stops quickly."

"I've got it." McCree pulls off his mask and wraps it around the broken tube. "Okay. We good?"

"It's flagged on a maintenance list for tomorrow. It should be fine."  

Angela, McCree, and 76 end up holding hands, balanced together.  Hanzo leaps out to one of the columns. Getting Hana out is much harder. She ends up clinging to his back while they leap. His artificial legs take the impact as they land on the outer layer of copper. She grabs a circle punched through it.

"Don't look down," he says. He fastens one of his clamps onto the outside. He does not depend on a safety harness, so his fingers are slow tying an emergency line under her arms. Hana waits patiently. Then she takes a deep breath and twists her body around the edge of the sheath. "Can you tie the staff to that?"

He doesn't have a spare length of cord. He pulls his hair tie free and wraps an end around the brave wings of Mercy's staff. He winds the other end over her shoulder and under her armpit and ties it off. "Thanks." She shoves her back against the column, braces her hands and knees against the sheath, and starts chimneying up. Hanzo waits, holding position, until he estimates she's at a height where the cord harness would hurt if she falls. Then he runs up past her, setting the clamp again higher up, so that she'll hardly fall at all. He waits until she climbs ahead.

"Good work," says 76. Hanzo ignores it.

"Winston," she says, "I'm at the... jelly... barrier. I'm going to try to put the staff through it."

"Jelly?"

"This isn't glass. It's a clear fluid. It looks like it gets punched with pipes when the platforms are close enough."

"Fascinating," he says.

"Can you just pinch a bit off with the biotics in it?"

"No, it's too thick, and the fluid's too heavy." Hana sounds like she's thinking. "I can shove my fingertips into it, but then it won't give any more. It's like it gets more solid when I push. It takes a minute to get them out, too, I have to pull slow." There's a banging noise. Hanzo jumps. "Hold on... No. The staff's stuck."

Hanzo grabs the clamp, takes a deep breath, moves it to the edge and puts his weight on it before he falls too far, and leans over. The sheath rolls out at an angle, and he can barely see her. "Hold still. I will grab the end, and we will push together." He hears 76 take a deep breath in his earpiece, but what were they going to do? Turn around and go out again? He grabs the end of the staff. "On three."

It takes both their strength, Hana pushing with both arms, her knees and back holding her up, and Hanzo shoving as hard as he can despite their angle, but he feels the staff warm as it sucks up the biotic energy. "This is too thick to force our vials in. We will need pipes and tubing."

"We'll get the cheap stuff in the vials," 76 says. "The staff will last a long time if Mercy doesn't push it."

"Okay. I'm going to pull the staff out. I just have to be steady." Hana pulls. Hanzo waits to see if she needs help. He doesn't want to risk overbalancing her by reaching too soon. A minute passes. Two.

"Hana?"

"It's really slow."

Three. She sighs in a whoosh of relief. "Okay. It's got a lot of glop on the end, but I think it's fine. Let's climb down and figure out how to get back."

"We'll come down to meet you," 76 says.

"Stay there," Hanzo says. "If you have a safe place, you should hold it." He starts down. Hopefully, he just cast doubt on 76. More importantly, he wasn't sure how to navigate to them if they were moving, no matter how mincingly. It was going to be too easy to lose his bearings when he was far below their level. "Winston, can you give us cover when we set foot on the ground floor?"

"I think so."

"I think I can get down most of the way on this thing," Hana says.

"Take it slow," 76 says. "You're on one of their most valuable pieces of equipment."  

Hanzo takes the point. Since the sheathing continues to thin and narrow as it nears the ground, he crosses over to the column with the clamps.

Hana is about three stories off the ground when things start to go wrong. The copper sheath at her back pops free of its rivets and swings outward. Hana is dropped. She tries to catch herself, but the coppery metal has bent enough that it's not easy. Her weight bangs down on the harness. She's safe.

More importantly, the plating was protecting a tube carrying biotics upward. The tube has been deformed. As Hanzo watches, a few splattering drops of gold turn into a trickle. Then a stream. The tube is splitting up its length, towards the tank.

"I've got a drop in pressure. We're about to get alarms."

"Hana," 76 says. "Drop."

"I can't!"

"That's not a killing fall. Maybe you'll break something, but you'll fall into a stream of pure-grade biotics. You'll be fine as soon as you're hurt. Let go."

"I can't get my harness free."

"Hanzo. Cut her loose."

Hanzo hesitates. 76 can't see them clearly, anyway. Hana is afraid of heights. The risk of losing her respect is greater than a possible betrayal if he cuts the harness he tied on her. He breaks the clamp free, dropping them down again. Hana shrieks, expecting a knife to the cord instead. The knots of her harness groan as he stops them again. The falling stream is widening. It looks more like the mouth of a pipe after a summer rain. There are flashing red lights up above. But Hanzo has diminished the drop to the ground. He grabs Hana with an arm around the ribs and snaps the clamp free. His artificial legs take much of the shock before her feet hit the ground. Biotics is drifting up into its energy form around them, sparking, flashing, whipping up past his face in tiny, pelting grains, like warm mist.

They run. There is no more time to pretend to be crates.

"There's a freight elevator I can take you down," says Winston. "They'll detect the hack, but I can get you through the doors at the end." And since he can't see them and is busy trying to deflect a host of alarms and detection, he adds belatedly, "Everyone run!"

Hanzo and Hana sprint on the floor. Above them, the others pelt along. The freight elevator is alarmingly slow, and the heavy security doors are starting to override Winston's interference, but they get through just in time. Winston pulls the transport out. Everyone piles in the back.

"Well," Winston says from the front. "At least everyone's faces were concealed."

"About that..." says Jesse.


	10. Demersal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaper obtains something he was looking for.
> 
> Jesse loses something he tried to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick TW on this for some references on the topic of suicide? I mean I don't think anyone would mind by now but I try to keep a no-surprises policy so there you go.

_Fearless desperado Jesse McCree and a tiny posse of unknown fear-mongers struck today in Italy. This is his first venture into international crime since his black days of Blackwatch! Where is our law enforcement? Will no one stop him? Their hapless target was this biotics manufacturing plant. A great amount of product was lost thanks the reckless vandalism committed on his spree of destruction. It is unknown what quantity was stolen from the veins of innocent patients, but-_

Reaper slams the screen down. Something crunches. He has lost the one advantage he had torn from that little encounter.

After a moment, he goes for his datapad.

Reaper had given his estimate of the furthest time they might have traveled to get to his trap. Since only three had come, and they must have spent a large part of the day in flight, they had been sheltering fairly close by. Talon had calculated how many warehouses and hospitals stood in the diameter, and set eyes on all of them. Reaper found it wasteful, but since his entire team had been destroyed, he decided not to offer that cricism.

At least it wasn't his suggestion to cover every goddamned piece of brick. He wanted to dust the air over the busiest ones with tracking material, watch from satellite, and see if anything went in... unplanned... directions.

Rob a factory. Rob a biotics factory, with its incredible security and its watchful, government-sponsored eyes. Not Ziegler's style. Morrison? No, not nowadays, it's much too big a target; Morrison prefers to pick the rotted bones of Overwatch when he has a need. Shimada? Maybe. Just maybe. Shimada had lost his taste for anything but simple, one-man-target assassination, judging by the pattern Talon had interrupted. He had been a kingpin, handing questions of logistics out to members of the family.

But McCree?

Reaper could see the light that must have been in McCree's eyes when he pitched it. He could see the cocky tip of his chin as he looked at Morrison.

He could have solidified Jesse's loyalty. He'd remembered it as being strong, once, before the desertion. Reaper had wanted it, but had been... distracted. He'd allowed himself to get sidetracked, to take it the glacially slow route. He'd been _merciful_. And Jesse had just proven himself to be at Morrison's side.  

Reaper thinks about that.

Eventually, he thinks that there is something he needs from Jesse, needs more than the red glow hidden in his flesh. But he can feel the cartilage separating his nostrils starting to corrode as he breathes. It puts his mind back on business: if he wants to sustain the comfort he's found, he'll need to kill.  

Back to business. They'd countered their disadvantage. So. They had resources to heal themselves. Next they would rearm themselves. Replacing the cannon is an easy fix. But they'd need the Korean pilot's mecha.

He tugs off a glove. His hand looks almost like it did in life, still freshened by Morrison's brief death. He gets on the network, using a little AI that was too common for its moves to be tracked but intelligent enough to get what he needed. Sales involving Korean robotics and weapons-related technology, open to anyone with the money.

Where? In... he glances at the globe. Calculates if Morrison took them onward after discovery, or pulled back the way they came. Morrison's cautious now. He didn't cover the same ground twice. Deeper into Canada? America? Probably not, McCree has a host of bounty hunters in America, and back during the days everything burned down, Canada had a leak of Overwatch and Blackwatch base locations. It's dry ground. Back to Europe. Reaper starts out the furthest likely distance he'd be able to travel. Starts narrowing in.

Results pop up. Six tomorrow. Two earlier today. They couldn't have made those. The ones tomorrow are tucked all over the map. Guyana and India? Far on the outer limits. Unless they are so excited about it they are already in the air, no. Chad? Possible, but the language barrier would make it less likely. Finland? Too close to the last place they knew Talon was active; for all they know, Talon's hosting it. Romania? Language barrier. Reaper glances at the last one.

Portugal. Close enough to risk, big enough to have what they need. As for the language barrier... Mercado had been a sailor, and he and Jesse had played with the language: first, lessons because they were bored, second, then to shut everyone else out of their conversations. (That reminded him: what was Mercado doing nowadays? Had he survived? Reaper should look him up.) 

The datapad closes. He tugs his glove back on with even, neat movements. He's committing to the trip. Who's he going to meet? If Morrison or Mercy show themselves elsewhere, trying to distract him, he'll know to expect just the people that are mission vital: the girl and Jesse.

Mercy makes an appearance on the news at a landslide in Wroclaw as he touches down. That's Morrison in a plain, hooded jacket behind her, helping to move rubble. Reaper finds himself tossing a gesture picked up from Jesse: a point of the finger, and a snap up, at the screen. He turns away. On the screen behind him, Mercy leaves the public eye, before too large a crowd gathers to escape. Reaper ignores the bait.

**

"Okay," Jesse says. He's gone from scruffy to downright shaggy, and his face is puffy, but his tone is all business and his voice has plenty of strength. "What did you see out there?"

"A lot of things that didn't look quite right?" Portugal is, regrettably, too civilized for them to be able to carry weapons in. D.Va is forced to rely on her observations to keep her safe, and McCree is trying to help her key into those. The place is packed. There were stands of all kinds of (legal) electrical equipment. There are display cases of rocket launchers and old rifles. Those are all safety-locked, but D.Va has questions about the safety of some of them anyway.

" _Damn_ right. Now, a lot of palms have been greased, an' a lot of important people are lookin' the other way, but there's a lot of sketchy shit out there and who knows, someone might've got an idea about bringin' in a prize for the department. So we need to be careful. Don't even look at the historical weapons. That might be a sting, and 'sides, they ain't well maintained. Keep your mind on business. You got our routes?"

"Yes." Since her only option if something bad happens is escape, Hana has spent the entire drive memorizing blueprints. The sale is extended over three large buildings. One of them is partially condemned, and stands empty, connected to the other two, evidence of how carefully the organizers considered their image. Route A is straight out the front doors. Route B of each one takes her through part of the condemned area. Route C  is more complicated and relies partly on the people she sees as she moves. Route D is more flexible. By G, she's just throwing a heavy object out the nearest window and following it. All routes end in the way back to the hidden hovercar. 

"Okay. Just let me know what you want, an' I'll do the obtainin'." Jesse has had experience in bartering, and it's his money. "An' if you get a real bad feelin', just tell me which route you want, an' I'll follow right after you. Right?"

"Right." She gives him a little nod and steps through the door.

The artificial skin on her face makes her feel itchy and stiff. But she doesn't look like polished, smiling D.Va holding up a bottle, like the poster on the wall in front of her. She looks plain, and boring. McCree even grabbed her wrist when she started to brush her hair. It's in a loose ponytail, so she doesn't have to think about how ungroomed it is.

Hana walks.

These mechas aren't the combat ones, like hers, a beautiful combination of hard-light tech, nanoconstruction, and miniaturization. They're older, clunkier, rigidly scaled models, meant for exploration underwater, or construction. But all she needs are the parts that her mecha can't replace alone without a self-destruct (and she's not keen on doing that, it's going to shorten the amount of calls she has left before she needs a whole new supply chest from the military at home.) Parts like circuitry. 

 She stops in front of a rubble deflection unit. That's got all the parts she needs to repair her defense matrix. She brings out her datapad and sends it to McCree.

"Hey! Hey! Can we get a picture?" A finger taps her on the shoulder. Hana turns, beaming for her fans, but the two have already backed up, arm in arm, one holding out a datapad. She takes it, waves them back two more steps, and raises it for a picture. By long, long reflex from celebrity selfies, she checks it. It's a great shot, the two of them under the big archway.  Light is reflecting from parts all around, glinting onto the ceiling, lighting it up in speckles and stripes.

What's the funny dark patch? Hana looks up as she holds out the datapad. The dark patch is gone. Route A takes her right under the arch where it had been. She didn't see Reaper fall on Lucio, but she heard about it. She knows. He'll ambush. Her eyes dart across the crowd. 

"Route B," she says under her breath, giving them a little wave and turning. "Route B!"

"Go," McCree answers. "What?"

"Reaper," she replies. There's no answer. Hana picked route B because it will be so easy to tell if anyone's following her. She goes through and around as many crowds of tall people as she can. She steps towards the ladies' room, ducks around a corner. The door to the condemned area is boarded, but the boards are flimsy, show only, and she's through. She whips down a little narrow hallway, checking behind her. Nothing. She's clear.

Hana starts running.

Daylight fills the little lecture hall. It's got high walls, but the upper floors are open except for some safety fencing. That one up there looks like a door to the outside. She wonders about the purpose as she sprints over the floor and starts up the wooden steps.

The shotgun blasts boom like the end of the world. Wood splinters.

Hana shrieks as the stairs ahead of her and below her give way. The jolt on the boards hurts, clacks her teeth. Look around, look around - Reaper is there, striding out of nothing. He hit the support column and he hit the stairs themselves. She looks up. Ducks as a last splinter of wood falls. His footsteps clomp in. He drops one gun, one hand empty, palm swinging toward her. She's in range right now, on splintered wood with no cover around her. He's only delaying the kill so he's close enough to take her life like he did to Reinhardt. She could jump and try to grab the lowest step, but she knows she has no time. Hana can't look anymore. She starts to bring her hands up in a futile gesture.

"Darlin', you harm one hair on that pretty little head, and I'll blow you to kingdom come."

Reaper's footsteps stop.

Hana looks.

Reaper has his head half-turned, looking at the upper level behind him. Jesse McCree has a... Hana doesn't even recognise it for a moment. It's big, bulky, snub-nosed and battered, the ugliest and most beautiful thing she's ever seen in her life. It's a... that's an early-model prototype particle rifle. Its underside is too ugly and bulbous to even fit a trigger; it's got a big, solid trigger plate on the upper side. Jesse has put the power cell in it. He's got his hand on the plate. She can see the blue glow through the shoddily attached side of the cannon. If he fires that thing, it's going to be because she's dead and he doesn't mind _disintegrating_ her. If he fires that thing, he could be the one to go. Or she supposes the blast could always go both ways. It looks decrepit enough.

It is a terrible plan. But she is still alive, and Reaper's hand has frozen with the gun on her, so she thinks it counts it for something. 

 "Don't give me big-brother bullshit." Reaper has stopped. But he sounds like he's heard a joke. "Younger than that, you were killing on my order."

"An' she signed up younger'n me."

"I heard 'signed up.'" Reaper's head moves under the cowl, but she can't read his body language with that coat in the way. "Do you have any idea which of us is more likely to die if you push that trigger?"

"You sound a little different."

"The pain's down. There's been a lot of death in the air. Yours, if you use that thing. Is your plan suicide? The coward's way out, after all that?"

McCree's gaze goes down to the gun, like he's seeing it for the first time. "I'm no Reinhardt. Never thought much about a glorious death in battle. I'm a gamblin' man. This thing blows shit into molecules, and if I don't come back from that, I'm not sure you would either. Guess I'm onto somethin', or you'd have shot her and come up here by now. So we can keep goin' around, I guess, but what do you want?"

Reaper snorts. "What do you mean, 'what do I want?'" He swings one empty hand across his body at the gun, then back. "She's Overwatch."

She can tell the way he sounds almost-sane, not out of his mind with fury, like what she heard shouting when she came around the corner, is bothering McCree too. McCree's mouth is slanted unhappily. "She wasn't part of it, boss. She just got here."

"And imagine if she'd left."

"Please." Jesse slaps a hand on the rifle, almost on the trigger plate, and Hana wonders uneasily. "You're attackin' the kids, and that ain't right. Lucio-"

"A child on skates. No soldier. He's out of the battle. Morrison would have kept him in combat. He's an obvious washout."

"And you crushed him."

"I put him out of it. He's still alive."

"You expect thanks?"

"Never from you."

McCree gives a little move of his shoulders that says he just remembered he's trying to argue with a seething brainful of black mist. "All right, you've got me, you've got her. What is it you want from me?"

"You know." The shotgun doesn't swing off her as Reaper turns his back. He passes it smoothly behind his back to his other hand and takes two steps forward. It's still aimed at her, dead on. But something in Reaper's voice just changed. He sounds more... he sounds less angry. More real. "It's all I've asked of you before. That's it. All I want."

McCree doesn't look resolute, now. He looks wounded. But his hands are still steady and the rifle barrel hasn't skidded an inch on the light railing. "I can't do anythin' about that. You've done too much killin'."

"You blame me for that?" And that was hurt in there. That sounded like actual hurt. Hana can't fit her brain around it, not with the muzzle still aimed her way. And it goes to resentment just as fast. "What way do you see around this curse, that I don't? Do you want me to jump into a volcano? Burn and return one cell at a time, in fire, with this smoke? Do you want me to survive by inches, in some hospice, waiting for someone to die so my skin will stop peeling off? I know who did this." His grating voice is rising, furious, and Hana thinks this would be a fantastic time for him to point that thing somewhere else.

"I've killed since you quit tellin' me to. I've just done it when it had to be done." Jesse swallows. "I'd go with you, no drugs, no bullshit, to fight Talon."

"They're a useful employer." But the gun. The gun just swung towards the ground.

"And a bunch of terrorists."

"They see something that you cannot. That Overwatch does not. They understand something you've missed about the world." Reaper stalks a few steps away. His voice growls low: "and you know what Mercy's done." His voice slows. He's headed off again, fast. "You know what you've done."

It's like he's pulled by some kind of magnet to getting angry, and when he's angry enough, he'll kill her. Hana snaps out of it and looks around for escape. The wall behind her has been damaged by his shots. She peels off some of the drywall as softly as she can and puts it down. There's insulation in the way. Behind that, it looks like bricks.  She looks up. She's not sure the wood will hold if she tries to grab the step. Given Reaper's wild swings between calm and fury, she'll die if she interrupts his thoughts.

She takes another look around. She can see something from this angle that she couldn't while she was on the stairs. There's some sort of trapdoor set in the side of the stage. It has a latch. It looks like it's a recent repair to an ancient job. She can see pale wood in strips around its edges against the battered stage. It's new, new enough that Hana thinks the hinges will be silent. She gives the figure a second look. Looks up to McCree. Jerks her head to it. She sees McCree's eyes land on her for just an instant.

"All I do is what I have to, boss. So while you're... y'know. Makin' sense again. Back in there almost all the way." She can see Reaper take offense to that, and fear jolts up her arms and spine like white electricity. "You know what I mean. When nobody was dying, you got real bad to be around." McCree stretches. Lowers his face along the rifle. His low, low mutter in her ear makes her jump. "Not yet. Git ready." And that's all he says on the communicator. "What in hell were you doin' throwin' me in a hole and climbin' in there with me? Fuckin' my whole system up with one hand, and makin' it up with more drugs in the other? What in _shit_ was that?"

There's a lengthy pause. Hana is afraid to breathe. Reaper sounds impatient. "I was there with you. Did I kill?"  

"So it'll happen again, any time you slow down? Do you get why I'm real hesitant to come down there?" She has to move, or else he's going to end up sacrificing himself. But she isn't sure Reaper is distract-

Reaper picks up a foot, puts it down again. Swings the shotgun down and stops it. Hana gets the sense he's actually struggling. That's her opening. Time to go. Very, very carefully, she starts moving over the floor.

The shotgun swings up and rests on one shoulder. The floor is incredibly worn and old, but the flooring is fake wood, and it doesn't creak as she goes. She just has to concentrate on being fast and silent and gone before he turns his head. "I don't take your lessons." Problem: there's a stretch of dropped boards in the way. How does Hana get over the boards? She can't stand and jump. It's much too far to go around, not with Reaper's voice sharpening. "And I won't take your tests." She starts to go around, but stops, it doubles the distance. She has to get across. "You failed me."

McCree swings the rifle impatiently to one side (its blue light flares and flickers, and Hana freezes, one hand stretched over the boards, thinking they're all about to be atomized.) "I'm sorry." She sees Reaper take that, chin coming down, stance solid, like a god accepting an offering. _Oooookay go Hana go_ she thinks, putting her weight on her palm. It's like her stretching exercises, like yoga. She can do it. "I shouldn't have left like that." Other palm. "I'm sorry." It sounds like some kind of litany. "I should've had faith." One foot over, spread in an uncomfortable Y of balance, arms high as she can to keep her body from bumping anything. Just like stretching. Just be quiet. "I saw how it was going." 

Hardest bit to do, swift and silent, _do not fall I'll_ die. Lift her toes off the ground, swing her foot over _yes_ sink flat on the ground for a second, pushup position, before walking herself up to her knees and then the tips of her feet and her toes as she moves, crouched, towards the trapdoor. Right up on it, now. "I should have tried to do somethin'." Manicured nails under the latch, she can see splinters in her fingers from landing under the steps but there's no time to think of that, just control its every millimeter of movement. McCree sounds like he's reciting. It adds a fine, high jangle of creepiness to the adrenaline already pumping through her veins. The latch swings open. _Pleasepleaseplease_ she just has to get in, _please don't squeak._ "I know you would've done everythin' for me."

She eases the trapdoor open. "Jesse," and that terrifying, grating voice has come the closest she's ever heard to gentle. Almost wide enough. Just keep steady pressure. Don't look at Reaper, don't look, don't look.

"I love you," McCree says. It's wide enough. It's wide enough.

Thank

you

She's through like she climbed over the boards, weight on palms and toes, touching nothing. She's under the stage, and the space is less than a meter high. She gets to her hands and knees. It's dark down here, but the building is condemned for a reason. The wall has a gap up ahead. She can see light. Across a long stretch of dusty, dirty floor, she can see a flimsy, worn door up just a few short stairs. Hana crawls with all her might.

In the room, it occurs to Reaper that the girl is a loose end. Jesse might have bought her life, but she'll be useful in keeping him compliant. He turns.

Jesse grips the particle rifle. There is dead silence. Reaper might be carved from stone. Slowly, he starts to swing around. The gun is coming off his shoulder with dreadful slowness.

"For her?" Reaper asks. "You lie. To me. About _that_. For her?" He doesn't even sound angry. Jesse thinks it is the first moment the hand jerks away, before the pain of the burn reaches the mind. There is mist rolling off Reaper's shoulders, wreathing him, sinking down from the edges of his coat. His other hand doesn't even draw the shotgun from somewhere unseen, as usual. The shotgun's lines begin to appear in flickers of mist.

Says Jesse to Gabriel, with all his heart: "I love you. And I can't."

He doesn't want to shoot, because he has a better idea than a dice roll. He heaves the particle rifle up between them, as high as he can. And before it even hits the height of its ascent and starts to fall towards the floor of the lecture hall, he turns and runs like hell.

The particle rifle, outraged at its rough and improper handling, its power source crammed into an aging housing and feeding energy to overwrought parts, flares like a blue star as it plummets.

Hana, in running away, stumbles and falls. Her ears are ringing. She looks over her shoulder. There's still blue-white light shining through cracks blown in the walls, although it dies as she looks. The roof is drifting up in a long plume of plaster and wood splinters. Bits of shingle start pattering down like ashes. No. No!

"Hana. You alive? Sorry, Portugal," says McCree in her ear. "Sorry."

"Run!" she snaps back. And she runs. Other people are running too, it's chaos, and she strips off her jacket because Reaper saw it and lets her hair free because Reaper saw her ponytail and sprints for all the good in her. Traffic slows her, and blending with traffic. She runs until she gets around the last corner. Jesse's got the hovercar backing up, out from under its illusory netting (ruined by the breaking, it's left, useless trash.)

"Too bad," McCree says, pulling into traffic. There is dust on his back. Little dots of blood pepper the back of his neck. "I liked Portugal."

"We didn't blow _up_ Portugal," Hana snaps.

"Yeah, but I was gonna be real nice to her." McCree tosses a cigar and lighter to her. "Could you light that, Hana? I'm drivin'."

Hana lights it. Her hands have almost stopped shaking. "This smells terrible."

"Yeah, hand it over," he says. She does. He sucks down smoke like it's fresh air. His eyes are on the road, his jaw clenched. They go past emergency vehicles going the other way.

"Looks like nothin' else went up," he says, checking the screens that show around the car. Hana does too. The smoke isn't black, like she expected. It's gray and billowing. Jesse whisks them out of sight like guilt. 

"You think anyone got hurt?"

McCree shakes his head. "Too early to tell, darlin', but you put us in a condemned stretch of buildin'. There's a strong chance everyone's just fine. Unless Reaper's off the edge. We'll know on the news." He smokes the cigar down to a stub and tosses it out the window. She sees it breaking apart in the road behind them like a falling star. "Guess I don't have to tell you, but sometimes, it's safer to use the crowd. We might not have lost him, anyway, on the run back to the car."

"Did you steal that?"

"Notice how nobody followed me? Blew all the money on that shit," he adds. "We can't get your parts until we've got that solved."

"Sorry." It was his money.

"No, no." He waves a hand. "Life's worth it. Did steal the power cell, though."

He's obviously expecting questions. He's obviously expecting shock. Hana keeps her face calm. Turns her hands over. The shaking's almost gone. There are little scratches and scrapes, little drags of blood. She digs in the purse in the footwell for her manicure kit. "Can I take off this stupid mask yet?"

" _Hell_ , no. You see me takin' off mine?" He gives her a second look, catching the jibe.

Good. She unsnaps the kit, pulls out her tweezers, and gets to work on the splinters. "Is he going to kill you?"

"That is now," he drawls, "a real clear possibility. If I get caught again... well, maybe I'd better pack a poison pill after all."

They both look in the displays again. However Reaper gets around, they know it's not in the open. They look anyway.

"Reyes always was real fond of the speedy little bikes," Jesse adds. "Damn crotchrockets."

"Did you see one?" Another splinter out, leaving a little channel filled with blood, her skin about to heal. She's alive. She's alive. She's okay. She turns her hands over. She really likes her hands.

"Nope."

He expects her to ask about what she heard. She doesn't want to ask yet. She just pulls another splinter out and turns her hands over, looking for more. That even recitation is still... really creepy. She needs it to be less awkward. She needs to hear he's okay too. She mentally pats around for something to say. A memory occurs.

"Hey," Hana says, dropping her tweezers back in the case, "good work saving my action figure."

"Your what, now?"

"It must have been a doll," she says, "because I heard 'that pretty little head.' Not even 'her.' 'That.'"

"Well, you ain't got a big head." He hands her another cigar and his lighter. "It's just how people talk where I'm from."

"Here, McCree," she chirps, lighting the cigar and passing it back. "For your fat, scruffy head. There! I'm ready to visit."

"Now, now," he says warningly. He relents after another two puffs, blowing smoke out the window. "You were lookin' mighty bad. Good you got some sass left in your ass. Reckon you'd hate the badlands, though."

She slumps back, resting in the seat. But what she heard is what she heard. "Uhm..."

He breathes deep. Gray smoke slides around his face when he exhales. It flows like Reaper's mist from under the mask, and she can't watch. "Gabriel was a different man."

"I'm sorry."

"He died a long time ago," Jesse says, dragging in more smoke. "I was right when I thought so. I just gotta realize it. Can't keep lookin' back."

The hovercar goes down the highway, one more dot among hundreds of thousands.

Hana opens her mouth to tell him. But he's driving. And this is bigger than she expected. She closes her mouth. She'll make them tell him when they're back, when Genji's back. Next time they all get together, they'll all discuss the plan.  


	11. Bathypelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo kicks. 
> 
> A figure emerges from behind the scenes.

The walls are concrete. The floor and ceiling are painted white, ancient and spidered. For this little hideaway, Overwatch simply took an abandoned station for underground trains, sealed it off, and equipped it. Someone, perhaps Reaper, put a signal beacon on the door to go off when the door was opened, but they were able to spot it. Winston made sure it would stay silent, got some tools out, and made some adjustments.  It's still there, but pacified. They are invisible behind a wall of defeated detection.

The door opens on a curving section of tunnel. The tracks are removed, but the structure is as it was, with archways to either side leading to bricked tunnels and wide waiting rooms. There is plenty of space, but not enough walls to make room for all of them. McCree and Hanzo share. McCree is unpacking, which means he is getting things out of his pockets. Something falls on the floor as he walks. Hanzo bats his arm with the side of his hand and points. McCree turns around. "Oh. Thanks."

"What's wrong with yours?" It's a datapad case, waterproof, with deep grips molded into the sides. There's a swirling pattern on the back, orange and black, a long and snaking dragon. It does not look like something McCree would like.

"Nothin'. Genji dropped his, an' it cracked. So I while I was waitin' for Hana, I got it. For when he comes back."

Hanzo looks after him. "Wait."

"Hnh?" The cowboy lifts both eyebrows.

"Have you heard from him?"

"Yeah. Course. Zenyatta don't need a silent zone around him or nothin'."

Hanzo realizes he must seem odd, voice raised, staring. But it's genuinely thrown him to think of a friend getting Genji a present, chatting with him, while to Hanzo he's just a silent, absent ghost. It's like there's two Genjis, or perhaps three: one the memory he honored; one that he was forced to leave falling into the snow; one silver and mysterious, with Genji's voice and hidden eyes, accusing and amused.

Hearing Genji's voice at the time was just... a voice from an Omnic-looking shell, saying insane and impossible things about death, disconnected from his brother. But challenging himself to lead, stretching himself to influence others, has roused him from his apathy, awakened his sense of responsibility. Not having the robotic figure here makes him think of Genji more, makes him realize that the metal shell is the only place he can look for the youth that left. Replaying what Genji said in his mind since then has been... wrong, like a loosened tooth he can't leave alone. And now McCree is missing Genji as a friend, and buying him presents.

McCree is kind to Hanzo's brother, who left distressed about his own death. Hanzo was cold to him. Reflexively, he reaches to the sake bottle. It is empty, as it has been for two days. McCree has been watching him in confusion. "You need the contact code for him?" he offers.  

"No." He has it. That's not the problem. "Cowboy!"

"Next time let me take two steps before ya yell, just for a change."

"Is he all right?"

"He seems a lot better. I didn't ask when he was comin' back, though."

"I do not care about that."

McCree rolls his eyes and walks away. 

That scruffy, uncouth, unwashed, only possibly ex-assassin is being more to Genji Shimada than Hanzo Shimada.

Hanzo sits quietly.

**

They are busy the next day. Whoever put the alarm on the door first raided the place, spilling water, stealing food. The group silently goes out into the city. Morrison steals a hovercar that looks modified past legality, probably owned by some local crime boss, from the way it was left with the keys in the ignition.

Hanzo thinks about the silver shape, from time to time, with the overlay of his brother's skin, face, clothes draped over it. He can't quit trying to imagine Genji's face in more detail. Which scars were from the drag? Which were from the window? Why hadn't Genji fought more? Why hadn't he struck when Hanzo's sword was reached wide, gathering momentum?

He's wondered these last things for years, but now that Genji is there to ask, if he were to ask, it is worse. He goes through practice katas for hours, but mere physical exhaustion won't quiet his mind.

He remembers Genji's body on the ground, he remembers distracting Reaper from the kill. For the first time, he consciously wonders how Genji felt, saved by him.

 _"What? You're the only one that can do this?"_ Reaper's mockery crawls into his memory. He and Reaper now share something in common. The thought makes his skin crawl. He wonders what Reaper thought, if he looked, if he even did think. If he respected the passing of the dragon, or if he had been simply doing what Hanzo found him doing, steady, purposeful progress through his enemies.  

How is Genji, right now? McCree is unapproachable, lost in thought. Jack is terse and impatient, distracted with his datapad. Hana is busy with Winston trying to jury-rig some repairs to her mecha. Mercy, from long practice, won't talk about people who were her patients.

The room is filled with dust and a few old bits and pieces: an emergency light, an aged bedroll, some parts of a table. When he goes to put his things away, he finds an old bottle of wine tucked in the corner. He doesn't know how cheap it was, or how potent it has become over time. But he has no peace, and he is glad to find it. He casts a look around the room as he unwraps the top. One thing was overlooked. Maybe he should go over everything in the room.

**

Genji is meditating when the tone goes off. It's McCree's spare datapad, highly encoded, but McCree has not yet programmed it and locked it. McCree hasn't even personalized it, although Genji added himself to contacts and put it on his own alert list. Should McCree need him, he wants to know.  He scrambles to it. The opener does not exactly tell him why McCree needs him, or where his datapad is, a logical first line. Instead:

_FF332: Hello._

_SG: Hello, Jesse. Is everything all right? It must be very late there._

_FF332: Yeh_

_FF332: I was just thinking. I wondered how you are doing._

_SG: Better. Zenyatta has been very calming, as I said earlier. The trees in the valley are very beautiful. The buildings almost remind me of home._

_FF332: I can't believe you let Reaper kill you._

Well. That's stinging, from Jesse. He, of all of them, knows how devastating Reaper can be. And it wasn't as if he didn't have overwhelming numbers! Genji decides that McCree is not himself, perhaps he is tired, or the usual nightmares have awakened him. Genji controls his response, although he has to remind Jesse what the problem was.

_SG: I can't believe Mercy raised me._

_FF332: You are a Shimada. He is a brute._

The first sentence throws him. It reads as an attack. Jesse accepted the rule not to remind him of it all those years ago and followed even when Genji's need died away. But the next statement? Jesse McCree saying that? Genji's fingers tap in a new window.

_SG: Jesse is there any chance an agent of Talon or someone has stolen your datapad, the spare one_

_JM: Uh_

_JM:  I'm in the bathtub trying to get sleepy, but I unpacked it the other day right here in the place. If Talon did I'd have noticed cause of the shouting and people trying to murder me?_

_SG: It's an open space, right, anyone can walk in?_

_JM: Well, yeah, there's no door on the room, but Hanzo's sharing the room so I'd hear the hissyfit_

_SG: Never mind. It's Zarya. I couldn't figure out why you were sending me pictures of guns and angry bears. Enjoy your bath._

Old window. Genji thinks for a moment. It is not just to scold him, or Hanzo would do it under his own name. Genji throws a rope.

_SG: How is my brother? Are you being polite to him?_

Hanzo thinks, taking another long swig. Jesse does not speak English as he was taught it. He speaks it in some kind of coarse... sublanguage. He must write in it. How does Hanzo break the rules he was so carefully taught in the natural way Jesse does?

_FF332: He is just same as the usual._

That looks right, in a wrong sort of way. Maybe this won't be so hard.

_SG: That doesn't mean you shouldn't be polite to him. I hope you are._

Hanzo's heard McCree say this. It has a long O noise, unlike the little buzzing U and S that Hanzo knows, and... the spelling is gone when he reaches for it. He does not usually have to write much in English. He starts the word and taps autocorrect.

_FF332: It won't bother me noon._

That's an adequate response, but not enough to get to what he wants. He frowns for a long, wine-stained moment, then taps. First it's very easy. Then it gets harder. Autocorrect refuses to help his struggle, because even autocorrect despairs of some of McCree's word choices.

_FF332: It's just that he's been upset. He aen't not thinking about it._

_SG: It was very quick._

There is no response. Genji wonders if he said the wrong thing, and Hanzo is now quiet, locked in his own unforgiven misery. If Hanzo has nightmares like he does, nightmares about how long it took, in agony, sinking into the snow. If Hanzo even waited to watch. Genji saw Hanzo's outline as he fell, but then he lost everything but white drifting against a dark sky. 

_SG: I do not fear death._

He does, but he meditates to rise above that, and he wants his brother not to think of it like that.

_SG: I was upset later when I saw how easy it was to put everything back. I felt fake. I was very glad Morrison had been through the same thing, even though he did not feel it like I did, because it meant it was real. And I was not pleased with myself, that I found anything to be glad about. But I am all right. I will come back soon._

_FF332: I'm sorry._

Genji sits up.

_SG: Why would anyone be sorry?_

_FF332: There has been so much._

_SG: I know._

Nothing. Genji stares, trying to think of the words, any words. None come. No more are sent as a handhold. That wasn't enough to let him hear how Hanzo said it, to know what he meant. He hopes. He types.

_SG: Please tell my brother I love him._

There is no response. A minute later, the other window lights up. McCree has assembled pictures of horses and sticks of dynamite, and is sending them all at once. 

When Jesse comes out of the meager little bathroom, Hanzo, slumped against the wall on his little travel mattress, looks up at him and silently finishes the bottle. His other hand is tap-tap-tapping on his bow. The datapad is back where Jesse stored it, its message log wiped clean as a leaf after rain.

While Jesse settles down to sleep, Genji is draped against Zenyatta. Zenyatta hums, an arm around his shoulder. Genji is still, trying not to second-guess or over-trust this ocean of hope.

"You are not as happy as I expected," Zenyatta says.

"I am very happy. But what if he was simply too drunk to think? What if he remembers nothing I said?"

There is a silence. Omnics do not understand being drunk, and Zenyatta knows it is a gap in his experience. "If something comes out when restraint is impaired, then perhaps it still shows that a force is moving, in the same way that leaves against the sky tell of the wind. Wait, and see."

Genji nods.

Finally, before he sleeps, he sends Jesse a lot of pictures of squirrels and throwing stars.

**

"Hanzo. Wake up. I need your help."

Hanzo cracks an eye. Morrison is in the archway, the light glinting off the skin of his scalp and the white of his hair. Another day has passed since McCree goaded him, and his hangover, from bed.

Hanzo does not like the train station. The tile murals and maps on the walls are soothing. The lack of privacy is not. McCree is snoring in the corner. Outside the archway to their room, there is a sharp drop down where the train tracks were. Across the way is the broad arch to Winston's room. Since McCree and Hana had not found success, almost everyone had gone to bed, prepared to plan again in the morning. Winston had sat up. He'd been sad that they hadn't had a chance to get good images of the inside of the biotics factory. The chemical composition of the gel left on the end of the staff had caught his attention. His light seems to be out now.

It has been another day. They have restocked some of their cheaper biotic stores and discussed how long to shelter. 76 has spent much of the time checking messages on his datapad, but he does so with a purpose that suggests he has a plan. Hanzo has been assessing the behavior of the others. They have a deeply-worn faith in Morrison. Hanzo decides Morrison's concern for them is real enough for them to trust, even though his choices have been dangerous. He thinks they are not thinking, but there seems to be nothing he can do about it.

Hanzo wonders what is so important that Morrison is choosing to request Hanzo's skills. He gets up and follows Morrison silently.

76 syncs his datapad with the navigation system. A dot appears on the map, and lines appear going to it. He chooses one and drives. He doesn't say anything. Neither does Hanzo. Finally: "Am I to work without knowledge of what I am doing?"

"Widowmaker."

"I thought you could predict when she would awaken," Hanzo says, with a trace of smugness. "Are you hiding something from me?"

"No." He sighs. "Thanks for protecting Hana. I was worried about her getting a ton of biotics dumped straight on her skull while she hung there. I was thinking about a snapped neck. You took care of the rest of her bones. It's why I'm trusting you at all right now."

Hanzo nods, reaching for his sake bottle before he remembers it is empty.

"Don't," Morrison goes on. "I need your hands steady. You're my countersniper. I had a friend looking for Widowmaker's little... home away from home. Apparently whatever she did, Talon either got Widowmaker up, or Widowmaker had her own alarm to get her out of bed. Whatever it is, my friend was trying to join us before Widowmaker shot her bike out from under her. She went into a swampy patch, and Widowmaker's got her pinned down. She's still alive, but she's trapped. I need someone who can countersnipe while I try to get her out of there."

 "And that is why we are going double the speed limit."

"Hovercars corner well, it's too early for patrols, and Reaper's out for blood. I don't know how close he is. If Widowmaker called him-" Morrison swerves. His front bumper destroys a tiny traffic drone that was activated. Hanzo looks in the rearview. The hovercar's flight has flattened the grass and torn the earth most distinctively.

"What-" 

"If you hit 'em before they detect you, they can't report what woke them up."

Hanzo settles down into the car seat and hangs on. There will likely be more. Fortunately, as they turn into the lowlands, the lanes get narrower and less important. Less money is spent on monitoring.

Morrison is a far better driver than pilot. He turns the lights off the hovercar as they near the dot. There are no streetlights, but it sounds marshier outside, smells of algae and rotting wood. Hanzo can hear amphibians and insects. "I'm not sure when Widowmaker will have a shot at us. I'd rather she wasn't the one to let us know." 

Hanzo is frowning at the map. Ahead, the road swings long and straight. It tells of clear ground and excellent opportunity to see them coming. "We will have to crawl in the water." He reaches out and grabs Morrison's shoulder.

Morrison goes still. He glances over. "What?"

Hanzo has his head bowed, eyes closed. He speaks in Japanese. _"O great dragons, I go against a skilled and dangerous enemy, who dishonored herself and my name, who works for a hidden employer. My only ally is this man, and by his plea, I must keep him from getting his brains blown out in this miserable marsh. Please, when I ask of you that you reveal the unseen to me, deign to share the sight that you give me with this fool, so that I might focus on the fight, that I may present myself as a Shimada warrior worthy to associate with dragonkind. Thank you."_

"What?"

Hanzo holds up an arrow. "Prayer. I believe that when I use this, the same vision that I have might be shared with you. Expect to see her as a red figure, should I be able to mark her for you."

"Uh."

"It is a gift of the dragon."

"Okay," says Morrison. "Sure. I'll start expecting that right now. Can we go?"

Hanzo gets out of the car and heads for the ditch.

They can hear two shots exchanged as they move. The sniper they are here to rescue is alive, and the other sniper is working on that. It makes Hanzo speed up, ever so slightly. They have a chance while she is focused and distracted.

Hanzo takes what cover he can, working past the break in the trees that looks like a car went off the road, sliding behind two trees that have fallen over each other. He readies an arrow towards the sound of the further shot, and fires, seeking a vision of his target.

He sees the red shape of a woman, standing feet apart, gun aimed at him. He throws himself down. There's a soft patter in the water as a tree behind him is hit. Sticks and dead leaves rain.

"God damn," Morrison breathes, impressed. "I'll keep moving. I can try to circle around." He taps his ear. "You're all right?" Hanzo clears his throat. "Hang on."  Morrison holds a hand out, takes his communicator, syncs it, passes it back. "Report."

"I'm chest-deep in swamp filth and glad to be alive. Widowmaker has been able to follow me, even when I move behind cover. I don't know how."

"She knew I was here," Hanzo says. "Hello. I will assist you in your departure. I am Hanzo."

 "So kind," she says. There is the sound of splashing.

"Did she have help?"

"No."

"We can't try to drive off with her able to track the car through the trees," Hanzo says. "She will find a shot."

"I know. We'll have to force her to leave," Morrison answers.  

The woman helps. "However she was seeing me, she can't do it all the time. I think it's something in her visor. If I can get a shot at her visor, we can go."

Hanzo keeps his mouth shut. It's possible Widowmaker's visor only works for so long, or it's possible she keeps putting it up so she can see what's under her feet. Speculating won't help. He moves away from Morrison. When he next fires an arrow to find Widowmaker, she is not where she was. Who's the biggest threat? That comes back to him immediately. It's him. With Ana forced down, out of a good vantage point, and Morrison not able to engage at long range, she will put him first on the list.

"Morrison," he says. "I will not have time to talk. I need you to work as Ana's spotter, should I be able to show you where she is."

"Got it."

He feels better as he worms his way through the tall grass. He had not realized how heavily Genji's presence, followed by sharp absence, weighed on his mind. Here, he's free. With a free chance to die if he doesn't focus. He puts everything out of his mind but the shapes around him, the planes of the ground, all shielding, opening or blocking lines; the geometry of life and death. He plots her momentum from the last place he saw her, the clearest line to an angle behind his cover, and intercepts the two.

The first arrow catches her outline in glowing red. He can hear Morrison talking to Ana. He's proud of his choice, and glad he did not waste the attention of the dragons. She isn't looking at him, she's bending, picking her path over... from the way she tilts her body, she's going through treetops. He remembers her called a dancer. She looks it, delicate steps on a bouncing surface. She's going in a straight line, looking down. The fall to either side would leave her in the water, slowed enough for Morrison to close in.

It rumbles up from his chest, low and strong. " _Ryuu-"_

"Stop!" Morrison snaps. Hanzo's teeth click. "Trust me."

Bastard. Hanzo is silent. Widowmaker did not hear him; she's not quite within what he trusts to be bow range. He draws an arrow. Why does Morrison hold him back?

The dancer is bouncing along (she must be moving the trees) and lifts her arm as if reaching for a friend to hug. Her weight is forward on one foot. She is close to the road. Perhaps she is looking for a way across.

Either way, she has neared the edge of the trees' cover, and she is not invisible in the night, as she believes. Ana's shot cracks the night. The dancer falls. The red lines fade as the dragons look away, denied their prey. Hanzo does not see how she lands: curled, seeing the water come up? In a dead sprawl?

"You shot her?"

"Ana shot the visor. Come back." 

Hanzo runs. He doesn't get up on the road, although that would be faster. They've swung the hovercar around and backed up for him. Hanzo flings himself into the hovercar. He has to go in the backseat; the front is full of a pile of mud, with an old woman's head. It's a good thing the hovercar is stolen, because Morrison, Ana, and he have turned the inside into a mudpit. Morrison accelerates, tearing back with the same speed he'd gotten them out with. The woman doesn't say anything, praise or criticism.

"Hanzo Shimada," she says finally. "I am Ana Amari." She says it as if she expects him to know it, and after a moment, he does.

"I sent my best assassin after you," he says.

"Was that the one who nearly got me in the bathhouse?"

"Yes."

"Quick lady," Ana says. "It was a pity I could not spare her life."

"She would not have expected anything less from herself."

The niceties observed, they look at Morrison, who has slowed.

"What?" he asks. "We're around too many bends for her to get a good shot."

A bullet hits the rear hoverwheel. The car spins off the road and into the swamp.

Morrison's slow saves their lives, but they are forced to travel in the mud until sunrise before they are sure it was just a spiteful little goodbye tap. She wasn't able to pursue. Suddenly, Hana checks in. She meant to speak to Morrison, but since they have synced, they all hear her. "Annyeong! I don't see you anywhere, Seventyjack. Do you need coffee?" 

"Yes," Morrison says. "I'll take a ride. Can you pick us up?" He digs his datapad out of its waterproof case with two muddy fingers and starts flagging their location.  

"I'll be right out! Which side of the road do they drive on, here?"

"Morrison," says Hanzo, after Jack and Hana have established the important things, "why did you not want me to use the dragon's help?"

"She was moving towards you. There's a stir in the air around you when you call them, and you get loud. I thought she might learn what that meant." Morrison gives him a long look. "I didn't want you to give that away because I pulled you in. After all, you plan to hunt her down when Reaper is settled."

Hanzo nods, slowly. It is far more consideration than he would have expected. And it is right. The dragon's emergence prevents anyone from attacking him head-on, but he can be killed before they are summoned. "Why risk sparing her? If the trees were thinner, she might have chosen your head, not the car, as her target."

"First settle Reaper, then hunt Widowmaker? That is an ambitious checklist," Ana says. "But as for your last question, I will show you what I have found."

**

"Okay," Hana says, in a low tone. They all entered softly, since it is early. Angela's room is still dark. So is McCree and Hanzo's. "This collection means what, again?" They in the depression where the train once stood, standing around the little table. They washed off the worst of the swamp muck outside. The men are shirtless and Ana is draped in some of Jack's spare clothes, a towel around her damp hair. Nothing will help them but a few baths.

"Widowmaker had it hidden in a secret stash, which I am not sure even Talon has found. Look again." Ana tips the viewpad. "What do you see?"

"A rolled-up wedding veil. Sheet music. A pair of ballet slippers.  Pictures of men with dark hair and stern jawlines, ripped out of fashion displays. A lot of postcards of... where is that?"

"France."

"And this all means that the woman is remembering who she was? The woman who, regardless, tracked Amari down, and shot at our car?" Hanzo is skeptical. "You are taking this as a great encouragement. It doesn't mean anything, any more than a mad bomber is improved by remembering a happy childhood."

"It means not everything is gone," Jack says. "It means she's hiding that from Talon. We know it doesn't mean she's emerging. It just means there's still a little Amélie somewhere in there. That's more than we had."

"It is important, if she prizes what she has lost," says Ana. "It would be cruel not to consider it. Can we bring her back without sinking her under the weight of what she's done? How?" 

"Listen," says Hana, low and urgent. "McCree has to know about the chance that we could get this Gabriel Reyes out." Hanzo and Jack automatically look at the darkened door. Her voice rises. "You have to tell him!"

Jack looks at her. For some reason, he looks at Ana. Ana blinks. Then she nods.

"All right. I'll tell McCree we have an idea."

"No need," says Jesse McCree, swinging around the door from Winston's room. He looks the kind of reckless, restless anger Jack was worried about. He blinks at the green and brown stains that still decorate Jack and Hanzo's wet pants, but there's something bigger on his mind. "I went an' talked to Winston while you were out. After all, Hanzo said we needed to not keep secrets from each other, right? An' you said, what, Mr. Morrison? You were there, Hana, you heard 'em. So I sat him down and told him we'd all agreed on it, like a real team. I told him I needed to help with whatever plan was waitin'. An' I-" He stops. He is looking at Ana. There is a little smile hanging on her lips.

"I know. I know," Jack answers. "We should have said there was a theory. But we can't capture Reaper. So there's no plan. I know this has been hell on you. I wasn't going to hold that out until I had it." He follows Jesse's stare to Ana. "... but I should have mentioned her." Ana had not wanted her survival given away. If she'd died tracking Widowmaker, before she could reunite with anyone, the grief would have been doubled for no purpose. Still... given Morrison's discouragement and distraction, they needed to know that other friends believed in Overwatch.

"Welcome back," says Winston, sticking his head out behind Jesse. "What happened - oh! The plan. Last night, I figured out how to capture Re - _Ana_!"

McCree comes along to greet her. It is not entirely his idea. It is more that he is standing between a gorilla and the gorilla's old friend, and rather than shove him, Winston carries him along. It's clear they won't be discussing the plan for a while. Hanzo heads for the bathtub. 

For some reason, Genji sends him pictures: a deer, and a pair of nunchucks. Hanzo scowls, but does not delete them.


	12. Upwelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rebuilding, and building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music: My Morning Jacket - Victory Dance

It is a bad idea to drink outside the little hidden base/train station.

Jesse is just full of bad ideas. The shape of the station is a sharp, high hill, and he's among the bushes halfway up.

Hanzo is out in the evening, angry because Jesse had found the alcohol this time. Jack is still inside, isolated, again, with Angela and Winston - this time, Ana is sitting with the conference.

Jesse backed off. He'd wanted to hear they could destroy that shit - _he can feel it fanning up against his skin from Reaper's, like a thousand tiny snake tongues testing; it doesn't hurt but it's_ cold. _He pulls as far away as he can. Reaper waits, patiently, for resignation._

He puts the bottle down. Haziness is always a risk, raising the physical memory of being drugged... which has more memories tied to it. It all happened, he knows. He's better off letting it sink into the past.

It occurs to him that Reaper lost Gabriel's courage; Gabriel would never have drugged him past hope of a  _yes_  because he was scared of a  _no._ That fact only supports what he'd already decided about Reaper.  But he files it with the rest. 

"Share," says Hana's voice firmly. He'd heard her come out, quicker steps than Angela's. Now she's peering up the little slope at him. Her eyes are still adjusting to the dimness. From the demand in her voice, he knows what she's talking about.

"Ain't you the wrong age for it?"

"Jesse," she says impatiently. He remembers days with Blackwatch, being annoyed that he could fight by people and not drink beside them (if they hadn't been making fun of him, they'd be someplace the bartender refused service.) He remembers thunking the gun onto the railing as Reaper raises the shotgun. She's right. It's dumb. He picks up the bottle, holds it out. She climbs up the slope. The first stars are coming out overhead. She sits down, tries it. "Ugh!" He takes the bottle back and puts it where it was. He's not sure more is a good idea, for him. Something he didn't expect Reaper to have taken. "I was hoping you'd be happier. Are you still angry with me?"

"No. No, it ain't fair to be mad. It was Morrison's call to hide it. You were doin' your best." She's followed his lead on not mentioning his chat with Reaper, which would be inconvenient at best to talk about, so... he can hardly be angry at her discretion.  "I was hoping there was a plan for taking it away. Being done with it. Spreading it around between people, though..." He picks up the bottle again.

"Well, Winston says it's not really gas, just something that mimics a gas. So keeping it sealed away is harder than sealing... gas."

"I heard." He heard the fucking word _quantum,_ which usually got dropped just before a headache _._ "I heard." He starts digging a hole in the ground with one heel. "Is Winston keepin' on fixing your mecha's missing bits?"

 "No. He has to focus on what he's building. But he talked to Torbjorn. Brigitte and Zarya are coming down. They'll stop along the way. Brigitte will get what I need." She's smiling in the dim light. "The power of reaching out to people!"

"About that..." he says. "You should probably stop streaming fights."

"But I'm D.Va."

"Yeah, and I was thinkin' about it. I think you only surprised Reaper with that little Reinhardt-style charge because he'd been watching your streams."

" _What?"_ Hana sounds like she's just heard something totally inappropriate. "Oh. _Oh._ "

"Yeah. He'd have taken an interest when you joined Overwatch. You heard what he thinks of Lucio. He's never seen Lucio in a fight. But you and Zarya put your moves on social media, so people are gonna know what your reactions are. You surprised Reaper. There's other people out there who are going to study your fightin'."

"I will find another way to keep in touch with my fans."

"Besides, you've been killing turrets and drones. Talon's forces come and go dependin' on who wants money. It's a matter of time before you have to kill men in armor. "

"I know that."

Jesse lets it drop. This is just them avoiding the topic, anyway.

"You're doing it, aren't you?" she asks into the silence. Apparently she is done avoiding the topic. "You're taking on a part of that black... shit?"

"Yeah. If it takes. I don't know if they're right about being able to share just a little bit. It might not cotton to me, anyway. Could go right back."

She takes the bottle, since he hasn't drunk from it, and runs her nails on it, _tptptaptaptap._ "Jesse..."

"I doubt it'll like me," he goes on. "It likes him."

"You're making it sound like magic."

"I know." He shrugs. "I'm not saying it was somethin' that could talk." 

"How much can anyone take before they go like him?" 

He takes a deep breath, and told her what he'd told Winston. "It went through my hand once." The memory is a clear instant in the fog, and he replays it slowly, careful of everything around the edges. They'd been lying in a rare moment with a light, the mist wrapping them like Rey - Reaper's arm around Jesse, Jesse's hand on his throat. 

There'd been a noise, and the mist had whipped back through the air, towards the skewed mask. Jesse had lifted his hand in the way - sharp, tingling pain, purple spiderwebs blooming and fading on the back of his hand. Reaper had set him aside, gone to look, while Jesse turned his hand over and found pinpricks of blood. The mist had healed its entry, and its progress through his hand, but had left him with the exit. The noise had been a false alarm. Jesse had been relieved.

"Did it hurt?" 

"Cold as hell." He'd shivered full-body when it touched his skin, not with horror but with jaw-clenching cold. He'd gotten used to it, as Reaper expected. Jesse's pretty sure that mist has been in his brain too. He takes the bottle. Swigs. Passes it back.

Hana is not interested in trying it again. "I was kind of thinking, maybe, Morrison would go back to like he was before Reaper captured you."

"They were friends," Jesse answers.

"He's just acting so different. Like he doesn't care about us as much as he did."

Yeah, he's been fixated on recovering Reyes. Reinhardt's death might have snapped him out of that, but he's showing a few signs of slipping back in. But there's another reason she'd think that. "You ever seen him caught in a bad firefight?"

"Yeah..."

"It's harder to kill him than the average man. So if he's caught in a bad position, or if he's charged, he'll just drop a biotic field and return hell. He's been doing it so long, I don't think he remembers other people aren't used to reactin' like that. Y'all are pretty green. No offense. Anyway, he'd have dropped himself as fast as he called to drop you." He thinks about that. He thinks about Mercy's grip on her staff when someone mentions death. She and Morrison are paired: ruthless saviors.

Maybe that's why, maybe that's what they'd need to recover any part of Reyes.   

"You've got a lot of faith in Morrison."

It's true, he realizes. He does. "What I trusted about him is still there. Just... worn."

"Do you think Winston's plan is going to work?"

Jesse has been trying not to think about that. He's going to be eaten up like Morrison if he puts too much thought into it. So he punts. "Out of all the things Reaper might expect," Jesse says, "he ain't expectin' _that_."

**

There is no one to agree that he did what was necessary. There is no drink to ease the weight. There is only the burden, and Hanzo bearing it.

Genji is harder to honor when he is just out of sight. A mere once-a-year offering of incense and meditation will not help. This time of year, years ago, Hanzo was listening to constant discontent, seeing the fractures in the organization left by his brother's reckless inattention to secrecy. When the elders handed him a responsibility, Genji let it slip. The lectures that rolled off Genji sank into Hanzo.

Looking back, Hanzo wonders if some of those duties weren't best left lying in pieces. If they weren't weights meant to shackle himself and Genji more tightly from trusting their own judgement. He'd taken them on his shoulders. He'd taken all of them. He'd given his life over. Then, when Genji would not follow, the burden fell on Hanzo. Why had he listened so intently to the harshest voices?

He cannot stop thinking about it. He can no longer imagine peace.

**

Brigitte and Zarya haven't had enough time, but they have to call in help.

The place used to be an old church, of some kind. It has a secret basement, but they are all afraid to use it; they dig tunnels to come and go from the base, and take those.

Blackwatch used it for a waypoint. The new Overwatch picked it for its dome. The place is ancient. The building is spaced with wide arms. Back in the day, it was luxurious enough to have balconies on the upper level. The stone facade is crumbling, but still pretty in the sunlight. The outside landscape is surrounded by gently swooping hills. The overgrown grounds are dotted with large stones and bushes. A crumbling stone wall topped with spikes surrounds an old orchard. The growing season is short this far north. Below the creaking branches, acidic balls of mold rot on the ground, killing the grass. Leaves rustle in the bitter wind.

Brigitte doesn't know what Winston's talking about when he gets onto the science, but apparently the black mist has predictable properties, and that's good enough. She and Zarya  walk with him as they listen. They draw out blueprints and get ready to start building.  

They all expect the raid at the scrapyard to be the most difficult part. Torbjorn has enough sway to ensure the things they need will be there, but getting them is their part. The watchmen are asleep when Morrison finds them, and more soundly asleep when they labor off with the parts they need under their plane. The plane can't take that much weight very far, but that was one reason they picked their site.

They all know that Reaper is out there, searching relentlessly. They know he's assessed their strategy, and as the weeks tick by, he is ruling out possibilities and reforming his plans. Jesse does not suggest he might let their trail go cold in order to pick up a few former Overwatch members. Reaper might find them before it's done. They have drills for who's escaping, and how. They use the little shed as a waystation for the project, keeping their communicators in a green box on the wall, leaving them there when the day's work is done. They relentlessly cover up all signs of change.

Brigitte and Winston block off a column under the dome on the second floor. Their walls could withstand a hurricane. The inside of the dome gets intense structural work. The third story gets walls that are just as good, and the parts they need are mounted and shielded.

Finally, they go to the sanctuary below. They have to build up the walls there, too, and add a sliding wall so that they don't ask for a sacrifice. They disguise the ceiling, as if there were nothing odd about the space above. They pop the glass out of the windows and replace it with specialized screens to keep the dust down. They establish a control room for the lever. Mercy wires that, as carefully and thoroughly as if she were wiring prosthetics to a brain.

The sanctuary of the church still has ancient pews and kneelers. Those all have to go. They have to set platforms in the floor below to help with construction, since they're lifting such an enormous weight in the dome. D.Va helps to build those. When she's done with her mech, she blends them with the floor as best she can. The control room, with its panoramic display of the floor, also gets a panel that controls those.

Then back up to the dome. Time for the tubing, the hydraulic system. Winston rarely sleeps. They unspool work.

Morrison, Hanzo, McCree, and this nice Amari lady trade shifts on watch, patrolling, refusing to give Reaper another opening. Zenyatta and Genji are going to come join them, but meet Torbjorn instead. They choose a watchpoint that they will renovate for the work: an island. Gibraltar.  

Brigitte can't believe they're doing all this for Reinhardt's murderer. But she keeps her mouth shut. Overwatch is asking this. Reinhardt would have done more for Overwatch. She cooperates. Time is helping her. It is helping almost everyone. She notices the rest of them are healing. Hanzo and Morrison are, obviously, not. They only seem to fray as the project comes closer to being finished. Brigitte presses her lips together. 

They work.


	13. Aphotic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before you can save a drowning person, you must be sure you don't drown too.

The trap has been set.

It's too early for Reaper to have found them, but they all know he will not stop until he does. Anything could have gone wrong weeks ago while everyone was travelling, and left him a clue. McCree is off looking into a report from a sympathetic source. He and Morrison both seem to think that there is a warning there. So Hanzo is patrolling, endlessly patrolling, around the perimeter of the place, and back through the base.

"You're jumpy," Morrison says. "Don't forget, you're not alone." Hanzo tips him an irritated wave the next time his silhouette is up against the sky. Then he goes into the building and starts checking the floors. It looks completely normal. D.Va has even gone around spraying adhesive dust to the surfaces they scraped. Morrison and Hanzo are both silent, each prowling like ghosts.

This is the worst damn part, the waiting. "It is a pity there is no way to test it."

"You're not a fan?" Hanzo rolls his eyes. "If this fails, all we've got is the giant vacuum cleaner idea. At least he won't see it coming."

"It's a pity the moon is occupied," Hanzo says. "I suppose there is Mars."

Morrison grunts. There's a period of silence while Hanzo climbs through the third-story window. By long habit, he stays just in the point where nobody outside could see him easily, but he has a clear view. The air is just cold enough to bite his nose, to make his fingers tingle when he flexes them.

"Hey," says Morrison. "Why do you want to lead?"

Hanzo slows. "Did. I cannot lead if they are committed to following you."

"I only care about the motive."

"I thought I could do better. It is as simple as that."

Morrison sighs. "I can see where you'd get that. I didn't want to pick it all up again. I made some bad calls."

Hanzo steps out on the balcony. Climbs down. The summer's growth is dying back in the first hints of winter. The bent grass crushes down and springs up, resilient, as he moves. "Do you want to now?"

"You know the last time I did?" Morrison snorts. "Back at the promotion."

"I'm sure you were proud-"

"No, no. Well, yeah. I was. But what Reinhardt said about me seeing what he could do? That was what I told him." Silence. Hanzo is past the orchard. "What happened was, Reyes was the other side of my coin. I was all right with that. So was he. I didn't know what he was doing, but I could have found out. I didn't want to know. I didn't want to think about it. I guess in the end I took it for granted that he'd be making it easy. That it was his job." 

"It was." He can see a bush move in the distance as Morrison goes around the hill.

"Yeah. But it wasn't something he did for me, it was something he did for work. He did it for Blackwatch, he did it for Overwatch. I just... felt like I owned it."

"What difference did it make for the job?" Past the old orchard.

"None. I wasn't in it for the glory." Morrison pauses. "I'm telling this wrong. What I mean is, I let myself ignore all of it. I was comfortable not knowing, so I didn't know. I was okay with not watching him, so he crossed lines, cut corners, paid in blood when we should have used sweat and tears. His job was to give us credit. We took the credit. I rolled it all up into my big, glowing mark on the world, something I'd done that would make everything better for generations. And when I found out... I took it personally, like it all had been."

Hanzo thinks of Genji. Thinks of the elders feeding his pride. Thinks of how eagerly he swallowed up their praise, nipped for more, and, fat on it, went to find his shameful brother.

"You were the leader," Hanzo says. "You were supposed to have him in check." He remembers his sword cutting down. He remembers block after block after block - defiance, refusal to change, to submit, to properly fight. Infuriating. Maddening. Hanzo can't feel the cold now, after moving in such haste, and he slows. He will have given away his position after that, if anyone cared but bats and owls.

"Yeah. Well, when I walked out that door and Gabriel Reyes was there with a few of his friends, and we were all armed... well, I had it in control, at first. And then I started on Gabriel Reyes and I came down, hard. I was proud. I thought I was saving him, I thought I was relieving him. I'd lost my second in command. So I was going to dismantle everything, and put him in Overwatch, right under me."

"He brought a weapon." He remembers blood. He remembers thinking it cannot be enough.

"I brought a weapon."

"You were in command. He was already under you whether he wanted it or not." Punched hit with the hilt that he felt up his arm, pained wheeze, drawing back again, and... a block. Sword notched, of course, because that is not what the blade is meant for. Genji suffered, and stared, and would not submit. 

"Yeah. I could have done it professionally. But I was feeling it personally, and that's how I did it. And Gabriel Reyes, who can read people like a goddamn book, who's been watching me for years, knew it was personal. He knew I already didn't think we were equals, like I always had. And he raised his fist, shouting at me. And I put my hand on the gun." Morrison's sigh is exhausted.  

Hanzo is silent. He can't remember who drew first. He was standing, voice raised, pointing at Genji, but which of them reached for a weapon? "What did he do?"

Morrison gives a little half-laugh. "Gabriel Reyes doesn't back down to God or the Devil, he's sure as shit not going to back down to Jack fucking Morrison. He didn't move. He just looked at me. And _that's_ when the shot happened. I still don't know where in the building it was, or why. I thought his men, backstabbing Blackwatch assholes, were taking advantage of the situation to prove themselves to their leader. They didn't think I was the leader. So I drew. I didn't pull the gun on Gabe, but I had it in my hand. And everyone with me saw that, so guess what they did. And Gabriel Reyes, who'd just been demoted and put in fucking servitude to me, who had been waiting to see what I'd do, was watching the whole thing. So he fucking drew on me. And it went straight to hell."

Which? Did Genji defend his terrible, disreputable habits? Did Hanzo use force first, to make him yield? Did Genji strike a not-so-playful hit, as he so often did? Did Hanzo shove him so he'd stand straight, as he had time after time?

Did it matter? They were brothers. He'd been placed in charge, by his family's demands, by their will. He'd determined everything, every detail. They'd linked Genji's every failing to Hanzo. They'd told him to control him or remove him. Remove, like he could bury his brother under the sea, like he could throw him past the moon. They were two dragons, unable to command each other. It was only Hanzo's pride, straining under his bright new yoke, that caused him to try to force the impossible. And when he breathed fire, he could not put it out.

He crosses over to the little shed where they leave their things. Through his thoughts, he notices the door is ajar.

That's odd.

He pushes it open and steps in. It's a terrible suspicion that causes him to reach out and swing the little green door open. There should be three earpieces, waiting for Zarya, D.Va, Brigitte. Instead, two earpieces gently hang. Hanzo looks over his shoulder. There is nothing. He closes the door and goes on his route as if he saw nothing.

Oh, _shit_. Reaper can hear them. Reaper has heard every damned word they said since they started talking.  Hanzo reviews it. Have they given the plan away? If Reaper has time to think, perhaps they have given him enough. Hanzo's throat is dry. He coughs twice. What can he say?

Reaper hasn't interrupted. He can say the same thing Reaper's been letting them talk about. Maybe Reaper wants Jack to suffer. Ha. Reaper definitely wants Jack to suffer.

"He still tried to kill you."

"And we burned everything down. For all the world cared, we died in the ashes." Jack sounds dispirited. He sounds as if he cannot keep talking about this. He sounds as if he is burning out, crushed under leadership he didn't want, the weight of the past, guilt.

It is Hanzo's turn. He looks right and left. There's nothing but rolling hills, the dark blanket of the orchard, the wind rustling the grass. And the words won't come. He's had it buried under the monument of his pride for so long that now that he wants the story, it won't come up. He just thinks of it as bullet points, as a tale Reaper already knows, front to back. Boring. Spiritless.

A tale-

"My family tells of an ancient legend about two great dragon brothers, the dragon of the north wind, and the dragon of the south wind."

"Okay?" Jack asks.

Hanzo turns and moves back towards the building. "Together, they have held balance and harmony in the heavens."

"Hanzo-" Hanzo can see him stop in the distance. He nocks an arrow. If Morrison is in the open, Reaper cannot be far behind. But Reaper is not stalking Morrison anywhere he can see; which means that Reaper has chosen him. Reaper will kill him, then settle his fight with Morrison, with no interruptions. His breath is the faintest, palest steam in the cold air. Part of his mind tracks it, in case it should thicken, and turn black, and Reaper's shotgun should touch the back of his head. His grip tightens on the bow. He can defend himself, but he will need space for his counterattack.

He puffs the air in little, living billows. "But the two brothers argued over who could better rule their land." Right, or left? Right, or left? The orchard on the left a maze of dark shadows. It's perfect. Hanzo's shot hits the old stone wall. He knows it just flagged on Morrison's visor as clearly as in his mind's eye: there is a heavy shape moving there. Reaper knows the tale and is enraged? Nonsense. Reaper can hear the emotion in his voice. Reaper thinks he is distracted. Reaper thinks he is easy prey.

Hanzo must get by him before he is blocked. He starts at a run for the building. Morrison is silent. Whatever he is doing, Hanzo has to trust him.

By running, he has triggered a chase. Reaper is somewhere in the orchard, fast and merciless, trying to get into shotgun range. Morrison tries to say something. Hanzo, aware every word is heard, runs right over it. "Their quarrel turned to rage, and their violent struggle darkened the skies," past the corner of the stone wall. It is too early to wait in the sanctuary. He will die there. He cuts to the right and starts along the side of the building. He must weaken Reaper, if he can, so he turns. An arrow is ready. Where is he. Morrison starts to say something else. "Until the dragon of the south wind," Hanzo ruthlessly cuts in as he crosses the lawn. He is scanning all directions for his target, where is he, "struck down his brother and fell to Earth," _where is he,_ "shattering the land."

There. A piece of the darkness moved there. His first shot is good. It punches straight through Reaper's shoulder. The shadow is gone behind cover. He fires another image of the scene: Reaper standing, one arm hanging, one gun left where he stood. He knows Jack saw that. Reaper is wounded. He has been hunting them for some time without fruit. He will desire to feed.

"The dragon of the south wind triumphed." Hanzo can hear his own triumph in his voice. Reaper starts moving again just as the disinterested dragons lift their eyes. "But as time passed and he realized his solitude..." He pauses for breath, and to give himself a chance to run up the wall.  He's through the window and on the same floor where he and D.Va cut materials, where Brigitte welded in safety.

Morrison is repositioning, tracking restlessly towards him in broad diagonals. He is trying to get into position, and scanning for Reaper as he goes. Whatever is going on, he has got the message.

Hanzo is very glad to be fighting by his side.

 "...The sweetness of victory turned to ash."

Somewhere deeper in the building, a door flies open, bangs against the wall. Hanzo is sure Reaper has already moved past. He will only waste the dragons' noble time sending them forth. Reaper would not advertised his presence if he knew where Hanzo stood. It was an act of intimidation, a distraction. Reaper has come close much sooner than he anticipated. They're on the wrong floor. Hanzo has to lead him back down. He runs.

There is something personal in Reaper's aggression now, he thinks. Reaper hears the story, and he has decided it is aimed at him. Good enough. It served one purpose already. He keeps talking. 

"For years, the bereaved dragon’s grief threw the world into discord," so difficult not to pant, but he can't let Reaper know how much effort he just put into moving, or he will catch up, "and he knew only bitterness," stairs or window? Stairs, or window? Which has Reaper predicted, which is he in a better position to attack? "and sorrow." He places his bet on Reaper being close to the stairs. He throws himself out of the window. Only his reflexes  save him from catching his hand on broken glass as he steers his landing.

He lands harder than he wanted. The double doors are open wide. He sprints into the empty sanctuary. Has Reaper already landed on the ground? Did he come down the stairs? Hanzo stands still. The ceiling is close and white above him, but high above stands the center of the dome. If he dies, hopefully Morrison will understand he completed his mission, and hopefully, he will spring the trap. There is silence. He thinks Reaper might be realizing something is out of place, whether in the building, or in Hanzo's actions. He might be hanging back.

"One day, a stranger called up to the dragon and asked: 'Old dragon lord, why are you so distraught?'" Hanzo's throat is dry. He fires a shot by the door. Reaper is not there. Hanzo turns and backs towards the door two steps. He may be about to die. "The dragon told him:" He coughs. The story is a part of him, nestled somewhere above his connection to the dragons. Sharing it with both an ally and an enemy is painful.

 But Reaper is provoked. Reaper is goaded. He can be driven into entering the trap. Hanzo is not sure if he is confessing, or accusing: "'Seeking power, I killed my brother.'"

There's a double boom in the ceiling. Reaper drops through the new hole. Hanzo backs away as Reaper starts forward. He finishes it because he has to. "'But without him, I am lost.'” The two guns come up.

A platform snaps up between them from the floor. Morrison is in the control room, and he's trying to save Hanzo's life. The platform is half gone with the boom of a gun. Hanzo has had time. He stands from behind it. His bow is lifted.

" _Ryuu-"_

He can see it save his life. Reaper stops with the gun raised. He is watching. Hanzo wonders what it looks like to his eyes. If he can see the dragon's energy as clearly as he sees the energy in their bodies.

 _"-ga waga-"_ he thinks _do it you bastard do it do it, you love their power as I do, you think it's too late to stop me_ and Reaper is doing it, folding his arms over his chest, head bowing as if in contemplation, and _that's_ his shift to mist, and he's reappearing off track, on a diagonal. That conscious effort must drain his ability to control where he goes. Hanzo does not track him with the arrow. _"-teki wo kurau!"_

The dragons oblige him. With a joy he has never seen before, they roar to life in front of him, tearing through the air. Their appearance shields him as he sprints to the back wall. Morrison has opened it. He slams into the back wall, hitting the bar to seal it. "Go!" The dragons do not harm Reaper; they were not aimed at him; they roar like a train through the empty space between them, filling the space under the hole in the ceiling, firing the air through the hallway. Reaper cannot escape in time. 

Over the noise of the dragons, he hears Morrison in his ear, paired with a deep, rising whir above. "Hammer down!" Hanzo doesn't think Morrison meant to broadcast that, but he's glad he heard it.

The turbine starts with an unholy roar. Hanzo feels terror that the back wall will not hold, but Winston was careful, and the door to outside is still open. The force of the turbine's pull tears the false ceiling into particles, sucks up everything in the room and passes it through the blades. It must do the same to even Reaper's armor. They cannot permanently kill him with it, not any more effectively than they could with an explosion. He will merely reform.

But the blades shut off as soon as Reaper has been turned to mist and drawn into the funnel, towards the bit of Mercy's staff that attracts his kind of energy. The air will go by him for just long enough.

Morrison drops the wall for him. Hanzo steps out, regarding the still blades and grating above him. He can see some dents and damage, but it all seems to have functioned as expected. And it has not fallen on his head, so the structural work has held. He walks through the hall, wobbly on his knees. Morrison comes to meet him. Neither of them say anything. They go silently upstairs to the ring around the turbine's exit. There's a tank there, with complicated filters set in the top. A clear layer oozes over it as they watch.

Below it, Reaper is reforming in the liquid.

A piece of Mercy's staff was used to draw the mist to a predictable point. The black mist of him, its motions mimicking a gas even underwater, is drawing towards itself. He can make out the white of the mask reforming. But Reaper is too far from anything to use as a handhold or a foothold. He will not drown. It's breathable water. He can't form into mist and move through it. The gel is there, Winston's version created from what they found in the biotics plant. It seals the liquid around him. He's trapped.

"How's it end?" asks Morrison.

Hanzo clears his throat. He's not sure that damned mist had time to learn and reform the earpiece, or if it can. He's not sure if Morrison's listening anyway. "The stranger replied: 'You have inflicted wounds upon yourself, but now you must heal. Walk the Earth on two feet as I do. Find value in humility. Then, you will find peace.'"

They stand silently. Reaper has reformed, and is investigating his prison. The gel is solid enough that he has to work to damage it, but when he does claw it, it goes back as it was. If he tries to push through it, he'll get stuck like a bug in amber, and suffocate. He tries to turn to gas. The liquid crushes the gas into a small ball.

"I would like a job," Hanzo adds.

"Fine. You're hired. Ana's still my second. I think you're after Mei in chain of command. I'll look into it, so we all know."

"I have given up on that."

Hanzo does not miss the tiny, skeptical side glance. "Anyway, I'm not sure what we can pay you. Or who's paying. I'll look into it." Reaper reforms. "You going to charge those dragons through him?"

"No." Morrison looks at him through the visor. Hanzo does not return his look. "No. It is not right that I kill him."

"Genji says his dragon cuts, not consumes. Yours is the one that consumes."

Hanzo swallows, eyes on the man in the water. It's a thousand times easier to say, now. "Seeking power, he killed his brother. Seeking power, I killed mine."

Morrison is silent, watching the same thing, for a long time. He snaps his hand up and taps his earpiece. "-I wouldn't, of course we thought of that," he says as Reaper pulls a shotgun. "You'll just be stuck in there, dying over and over. Don't do it." Reaper appears to consider this. He attempts to push the shotgun deeper into the gel, probably thinking the gel will trap the escaping gases. Hanzo hides a frown. But Reaper appears to be having troubles getting the shotgun either deeper, or out. Cutting through the gel with the gases from the shotgun isn't going to happen. "He was like my brother. But I don't know what's left of him."

Hanzo is silent. At the end of all of it, he might have to act. But in this, his guilt feels as Reaper's guilt. As Morrison's guilt. He will inflict wounds on himself. Again.  "The dragons knew I sought to stop him. They reacted with all their power. How can I ask them to kill him? How can you?"

Morrison syncs his datapad and his earpiece and starts tapping buttons. There's a popping noise in Hanzo's ear. "76. Watch your words, I think we've got a guest on the channel. You know. Our guest."

"What? A guest? The guest already? Hey! You're alive!" And Winston has caught himself up. "How is your guest?"

They both look at Reaper. He is experimentally seeing how much effort it takes to free his feet after allowing them to sink (as much as they will.) He appears to be stuck.

If they let Reaper escape, he will commit genocides in revenge for this.

"Fine," says Hanzo. "Fine."

"Fine, just fine," says Morrison. "We're ready for pickup."

"We'll be right over."

Morrison says nothing. Hanzo says nothing. Reaper, who has no air to speak, says nothing.

**

He did not know Gibraltar, but he has learned it in his prowling. Genji remained with the others, but Hanzo is sure that Morrison will tell Genji to find him.

Hanzo sits, very quietly, looking at the sky. It is midmorning. He can hear Genji climb up, see Genji reading his body language. Genji walks over and sits down next to him, metal hip pressed against clothed one, arm against arm, shoulder to shoulder. With him.

Finally, Hanzo speaks.

_"It was unforgivable."_

_"Don't tell me what I can't do."_

Genji. Hanzo laughs hard, snorts wetly, his throat is tight. A memory rises: dark pillars standing between him and the sea. Genji above, standing on huge rocks, shouting at the view. Hanzo had been distracted, thinking of whether or not his father was waiting for them. Genji turned, perched on the tips of the stones, and taunted him mercilessly until he'd finally chased after. The sea had come into view. They'd played and climbed for the rest of the day.

 _"I am not a dragon,"_ Hanzo says. It comes easiest in Japanese, although it will never come easy _. "I am a man, with a man's heart, who thought he could fly to the dragon's heights. I could not understand how wrong I was."_ There's too much to say. He stops.

 _"And I've always told you when you were wrong."_ It's not funny. It's funny. Genji's arm goes around him. Hanzo ducks into it. This armor is Genji now, so that's what he hugs.

 _"I have been cruel to you,"_ Hanzo says at last.

Genji nods, and shrugs, at the same time. _"You have been forgiven."_

Hanzo isn't sure how. _"I thought..."_ he lets it go. Burdening Genji with it feels like the last thing he should do. Genji gives a little nod, as though he understands anyway. _"I don't know what to do,"_ Hanzo says. _"But I will-"_

Genji snorts. _"You do. It's in the tale. Look outside the Shimada name for honor. Find the value in what Lucio treasures. What Zarya protects. What Mercy upholds."_ His voice goes teasing again. _"If you cannot, I will help you. It's easy for me, by now."_

Hanzo snorts. He can't ruffle Genji's hair, but he can flip the end of his scarf into his face. He didn't realize how tight the arm around his ribs was until Genji lets go, with a noise of complaint, to clear his visor. Then he sucks air in with a whoosh.

The sky is clear and high. He feels light.


	14. Epipelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simple resuscitation on a drowning person is not a complete cure. Lungs damaged by water may have difficulty functioning, leading to collapse, even hours later. Only treatment, observation, and time will help.

It's Jesse's favorite time of day, when the sunlight helps his concentration by scorching away thought, when the air is heavy and still. He misses his hat, the old one with his Blackwatch symbol strapped to it. He hasn't seen that since Reaper captured him the first time. He rolls his head back and squints up at the nose of the shuttle. Gibraltar's sky is as clear as ever. There's not a cloud in the sky, not the slightest bit of haze. It hangs over them hard and blue as a gem.

Winston's console is set up behind blast barriers on the launch pad. Jury-rigged wires snake towards the shuttle. "It's too bad cryostasis is so risky," Winston is saying, "and Torbjorn had to send Mei's protypes out of storage. We could use more time to study this. Athena, I need a final check on the pipes."

Jesse doesn't look up.

"So," says Hana, "this little implant thingie looks for patterns of brain activity that look like mindless rage, or sudden deadening of emotion. Or both. Because according to Jack, he was a little off, and then one day snapped. Jesse says he's always been cold, and then he changed, and after that he must have snapped, he doesn't know? Ana says he was kind of a psychopath so you should expect him to be calm when he's dangerous." Her voice lifts. "Nothing is helpful, and Jack has to wear that the rest of his life?"

"Anyone who takes that," Ana pauses, and drops in a word in Arabic, "into their body has to." Her voice is mild. "However many of us that might be."

Jesse doesn't say anything. He's turning Winston's implant in his hands. Like most of this project, it's snatched up from the past and wedged into their current needs. The original was meant to help find small spots of brain damage to assist Mercy in reconstruction. Athena reprogrammed it with a map of the brain to detect emotional activity. It's quite small, meant to be slid under the skin so it can meld itself to bone with a thousand tiny anchors. It's got long tendrils that will run through his scalp. Those drag over his fingertips, like they're trying to clasp already. It feels disturbingly organic, warming in his touch.

They need whatever they use to blend in with the body, so a weak mist won't try to reject it.

"Hit me, Winston," he says. He's standing in the sunlight. The shuttle's shadow is tiny.

They've opened the base of Winston's old shuttle, fitting in four transparent holding cells, with little raised shapes that will do for cots, and nothing else. Hoses and nozzles line the walls, carefully pressurized systems that connect all four. There's some that are just to let Reaper's mist access each block. There's one that will release a tranquilizing mist. (Not that it will do any good against Reaper until it's happened.) There's a complicated hose system that runs between cells. It's carefully filled with liquid nitrogen until they're ready.  Reaper's oversized cube is in a cell. They haven't let him out, because the shotguns that are defeated by the gel will take out a cell wall eventually. They've had to hurry. Winston changed the breathable water in his gel capsule once, but it's been a while. He could suffocate and ruin everything in a constant cycle of death.

Winston looks at him. Looks at the gel tank in the cells. "I want to wait until we've gotten the first step out of the way."

Jesse looks away. He knows Winston is trying not to let him over-invest, not until Morrison's shown them if this damned theory works at all. It's too late for that. Mercy's careful preparations, hands on his skin, felt like a goddamn ritual. An invitation in their bodies, a barrier to full-out invasion. Offering them to the mist, so they can take it prisoner. _Sacred_ , he thinks. Angela would have made a fine priestess millennia ago, marking out the vessels to the dem - gods. He tries to follow Hana's rule of treating it all like it was completely normal.

"I will be standing by to raise the dead." Mercy says flatly. Jesse's jaw locks. She's just answering Winston. "If we do not have initial success, we will recover. We will think of something else."

"Guess that's my cue," says Morrison. There's still a smear of blood over the nape of his neck. Hana takes a few steps back towards her mecha, up on the stairs across from the launch pad.

The mecha is a sensible reaction to being near a blast site. If it fails, if Reaper takes Morrison's life and breaks loose, Mercy's raising Morrison, Mei's cryofreeze is overwhelming the shuttle, and Winston's sealing it and shooting it all into space. Gibraltar is still on the world list of acceptable launch sites, thanks to Winston's non-Overwatch assists with communications satellites. They'll get it down when they have a way to save Morrison and Angela.

It's like they're making backup plans against the actual goddess of victory.  

Jesse turns his back. Reaper hasn't looked at him once. Jesse hasn't looked at Reaper. Reaper knows Jesse's there, and has measured Jesse's awareness. Jesse doesn't know what to expect from him now. He wonders who'd get priority now: him, or Mercy? He tucks his whole arm against his ribs and stares over the sea.

Genji was going to come and sit with them. He turns and looks up. Genji and Hanzo are back-to-back on the roof, sideways to the shuttle so they can both see. Genji's head inclines, and he flips Jesse a little wave. Jesse waves back and looks away.

The last newcomer is sitting quietly, letting them all talk around him. Zenyatta's got one hell of a presence. Jesse crosses over and throws himself onto the concrete shelf on the other side of the road. Ana crosses over and settles down by him.

"Surprised you're staying," says Jesse to Ana. Morrison steps up to the door of one of the cells. Winston opens it, reluctantly. Mercy climbs up onto the shuttle with them. A case in her hand carries the usual: defibrillator for the heart, nanoinjections to keep the brain healthy while bloodflow is restored, various other little tools to pry people out of the jaws of death. She's dressed in full battle armor. Jesse knows that it's the only way she'll be able to stay her needed few seconds if Reaper gets out, but he's sure it's also psychological. Her other hand has her staff in a deceptively easy grip. She goes past Winston to attach the cuff, the sensors, the electrodes. The needles.

"This... is important to Jack." Ana pauses. "If it does not work, any of it, I do not want to have to be told."  

"Fair."

They are silent. Zenyatta does not volunteer anything. Morrison goes into the cell and lies down. Straps himself in (they're just to help if he starts to roll off the cot. They're not to restrain. No strap is going to save them if he needs to be restrained.) Mercy slaps her datapad against the cell door, sterilizes her hands, and uses the hands-free technology to flick through the notes, directing page turns with movements of her eyes.

Winston and Ziegler speak a different language, trading checks and all-clears. Jesse puts a hand over Ana's.

"Initiate," says Ziegler, and that's it, after the ceaseless preparation the moment is here, and they're falling into it. Jesse turns his head as Ana puts her face to his shoulder.  His cheek presses against her smooth hair. They can hear the tones tracking Jack's vitals slow, stretching beat by beat, and lengthen. There's a red flash, bright as rubies. Gel splatters against the walls as the case, and Reaper's body, are hit by lasers, destroying the integrity of both. Jesse looks. They're pretty sure Reaper can't reform in the cell Jack's in. But the damn black shit has been acting differently since it got a host.

The mist thins and spreads. It's in all the cells, even Jack's. It roves, black as star-eating space. But light starts to show as it moves, coordinated again, pouring out of Jack's cell. Reaper starts to reform, alone.

Stumbles.

Winston's already putting pressure in the tubes between cells, sealing them off and filling them.

"Preparing to revive," Mercy says, which is a pretty damn succint way to say "pulling Jack Morrison out of clinical death." She's got her staff in her hand, but she doesn't need it, yet, her hands on the cell door, on her mission. It's all planned.

The sensors on Jack go crazy, suddenly stuttering. This is not planned. Ana jolts, standing. Jesse moves with her. Reaper is sinking to his knees. They can hear the detectors on Jack's body going wild. Settling again into a rhythm. Winston is looking at his screen, clicking keys, calling numbers. Athena's voice has chimed in. Ziegler's attention is back on her datapad. Jesse wants to scream at them, but they're doing what they should be doing: nobody goes near those doors until they know the situation's stabilized.

Until they know who Jack is.

He glances at Ana. She is watching Jack with narrowed eyes. They're all waiting for the same thing: for a mask to form over his face, for his pulse rifle to materialize by him. Winston has a hand raised over the cryostasis button.

Jack flails, tears the straps, rolls off the cot. Sensors snap free. The beeping changes to panic.

"Aggression?" Ziegler asks.

"No." Winston sounds sure. "Athena, monitor Reaper for aggressive action. Fire as needed." Ana crosses over to back Athena up on the button for the lasers. Winston gets up, dropping his datapad onto its shoulder straps, and approaches.  

Reaper is on his knees, clutching his throat. Jesse keeps his mouth shut. Reaper's not going to die. He's going to have to wait.

Morrison gets up, slow and shaky. He looks at the door, then at them. Then he settles down to sit on the cot. He's shaking - no, shivering, full-on uncontrollable shudders like he's been pulled out from under ice, hands jerking so hard he can't steady himself as he settles down. Jesse shudders in sympathetic memory. That cold, that fucking cold. He can't figure out how long it took him to get used to it, can't even remember when he did.

( _Good,_ he thinks.)

Winston and Mercy climb onto the shuttle. Jesse watches, still. Ana's got the same caution beside him. They are two gunslingers waiting to see if the shot is needed. Winston's the one who goes in through the door. Jack glances up. His relieved, shaky smile is pure Morrison. Jesse can hear Ana letting out a slow breath. Mercy glances at Reaper. Jesse looks too. If he's faking weakness, it's convincing.  

Mercy reaches out and draws Morrison to his feet. They can see her lips moving, Jack answering, although the walls muffle their words. Winston watches like a hawk. Mercy's hands are steady as she smears anesthetic gel up Jack's forearm. Takes her scalpel.

The blade flickers, bright and smooth in its travel. Jack turns his hand. They can all see the cut open. They can all see the black suddenly forming at the edges. They can all see it pull shut. Jack, shivering again, backs up to the cot and settles down on it. Mercy waits. He looks up, says something to her, and looks out at the rest of them. Ana, still at the console, gets a thumbs-up. Jesse nods. Mercy leaves, sealing the door behind her. Winston hops to the ground. Ana heads back to Jesse as Winston starts hitting buttons. Reaper looks up as the tubes between rooms hiss open again.

Jesse was expecting it when Winston vaporizes Reaper with a quick shot of the laser panel built into the top of the cell. They all wait. If Reaper has the ability, he's going to pull the mist back out of Jack to him.

Reaper reforms. He's not even bothering to do it on his feet.

Winston busies himself with sealing all the tubes off again. He motions Ana back to stand by the laser button. Then he picks up his toolbox and climbs back onto the shuttle. He starts disconnecting Jack's cell from the others and hooking it up with an oxygen recycler. Jesse doesn't look away from Reaper. "Okay, Winston," Jesse says. "I want the fuckin' scalp spider."

"We don't know what it's done to Jack yet," Ziegler says. 

"We know we took some of the mist out of the man it's constantly remakin'," Jesse says. "Look at him." Reaper hasn't moved. They look. "That's how he goes when he's hurtin' bad. We're gonna have to kill him again, and since we ain't lettin' him kill, we don't know how many times he's going to be able to come back. Fix me up. Put me in there. If I end up needin' life, drop me in cryostasis until you've figured out how to mock it up with biotics."  

Winston heaves a huge sigh, but they've all talked about the time pressure until Reaper can't function. When he can't reform, Reyes is gone in the mist. He motions Jesse over to the workstation. Hana comes down to them in a sudden, light run. Her arms go around his shoulders. He hugs her back. She clings, for a long moment, looks in his face, pats him on the arm, and turns and walks back to be closer to her mecha. Jesse looks up at Genji, who has his arms folded in mirror of his brother behind him. But he flicks three throwing stars from the back of his hand and jerks them in a flashing salute.

 Jesse waves back with his metal hand. They're not like brothers. Frankly, that seems the safest to him, just when he's about to buy in on Reaper's curse. But they've got a kinship. He's grateful. 

Winston is very careful in applying anesthetic gel before he sinks the implant. The spider's tendrils track clear to Jesse's other ear, but he only knows that because he watched Morrison's. When he runs curious fingers over his scalp, he can't feel anything. Winston does not often do first aid, and learns from his small mistake with Jack. He makes sure the bleeding has stopped before he shuts off the biotic field. He pats Jesse on the shoulder. Jesse leans in and hugs him. Winston's fur smells like sunlight and clean animal. His hug is huge.

Reaper's openly watching him now. Jesse walks without trying to return the mask's empty gaze. He looks at Jack instead. Jack is still shivering, but it's not as bad as it was. Jesse stops outside his cell, head to one side. Jack closes his eyes. Jesse knows: Jack doesn't want to let himself ask Jesse to take this on. They're either taking it into their bodies, or they're not. No pressure.

Jack's untouchable aura, his bulletproof conviction, has burned and gone. And now he has hope. Jesse feels it too. He glances at Reaper and reaches for the door. Athena opens it for him. He walks in and sits down. Mercy comes in silently. She's filled with purpose, a fervent glow in her eyes. It disturbs him. There's something it reminds him of, something so disconnected he can't place it. Her hands are quick and steady as she starts attaching sensors. Sinking needles. Her face is like she's a million miles away.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jesse can see Reaper looking between Mercy and Jack. Whatever he's seeing, as Mercy pushes gently on his shoulder, Reaper slams the side of his fist against the glass. It's a clear demand. Jesse doesn't have time for it. He settles on the bed and tosses the strap across his chest. He wasn't going to bother, but he's not as strong as Jack. Mercy fastens it.

Her eyes refocus. "You're sure?" she asks. He can hear the coils in the corner activate as Winston prepares. This time, he has more faith that they can stop Reaper from stepping out of nothing, right next to him.

"Yeah. Hit me, angel."

This time the movement through the glass is purposeful enough that Jesse looks. Reaper is forming a shotgun. By the time Jesse looks at Winston, he's already slammed the button down. There's a bright flash of red. The tubes aren't open yet. Reaper just has to swirl (the mist of him looks thinner, grayer, this time) and settle. Mercy steps out while Reaper's busy. The cells are all soundproof, so he can't hear it coming. He does know she hit it, because _wow,_ that was a nasty rush of lightheadedness. Jesse closes his eyes. Whatever Reaper's planning, they're both out of time.

This is dying, this sudden, graying, dropping feeling. (She gave Jack a cocktail to deaden it. Jesse told her to skip it. He's had enough of people prettying up this bullshit.)  Jesse wants to fight it, because _fuck_ this. But if he does that, he knows Mercy will swoop in. She'll revive him early. The mist won't think he suits it. All this will be wasted, and Gabriel will still be overwhelmed.

So he lets go. He sees a red flash, and a light, growing. The light whitens, bright and perfect, and narrows to a tunnel.  

The light is smothered. Jesse's brain is too far shut down to know what it means. He just knows it's there, alien and arctic, twisting and knotting around him like thorns. He comes back to himself panicking. There's a jarring thud. There's air in his throat, in his lungs, everything feels scorching hot suddenly. He's dripping sweat. His skin is crawling, muscles spasming.

Shapes and shades start to come into focus. The bright swim of the safety glass, the level floor under his hands. Any pain is gone by the time he gets himself together, leaving him feeling wrung out and cold to the bone. Did it bring him back? Did they? He gets no clue when he squints up at the blurry white-and-gold of Mercy until her outline appears, distorted with the imperfections of the safety glass.

Ridiculously, it occurs to him that Angela might as well lie on the floor if she wants in. These straps ain't doing _shit._

He feels alive. He appreciates that. He appreciates how quick it was. He was afraid it was going to be much, much worse. His body swims with that familiar pins-and-needles buzz. Jack probably thought it was just nerves. Hell, no. It's the mist settling in, making itself at home, familiarizing itself with him. Mapping him. Maybe, he hopes not, understanding him. The finality is oddly comfortable; it's too late for second guesses. Nobody can change what he just did. Not him, not Mercy, not Reaper.

A thought occurs. He reaches over his shoulder, flexing his mechanical arm to one side to get the muscles out of the way. He flexes his mechanical hand a couple of times. He can't feel pain from it unless something goes wrong with the wires. All that gets sent to his brain is facts about position and pressure.  

There's a pair of toggles set under the muscles and cables. He knows the combination, to safeguard his own brain should the wires get fucked up. He shuts off the nerve connections. The arm thunks heavily to his side. He glances up. Mercy's at the door. He holds up a hand. Then he grabs the end of his little finger, which hasn't worked quite right since he fell on it while Reinhardt was being murdered. Twists. It snaps. He drops it on the cot. He doesn't look at anyone else, just watches it. A little fluid leaks from it. A little fluid drips from his finger.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Okay. So the mist's power does diminish as it split. Good, because if that joint had turned black and rejoined on him, he would know it was much too strong for all of them, and he'd fucking panic. Out of curiosity, Jesse picks it up and presses it to the end. He can feel it jump a little in his grip. Surprised, he opens his fingers. He sees a tiny line of darkness before it runs into the shadows of his prosthetic. The joint stays. It's joined back like it never came off. He grabs the mechanical fingers in his other hand and folds them. It's joined back just a little bit wrong. Just like it was. 

Feeling jolts back down his arm as the mist resets the connection for him.

Jesse exhales, very slowly. He sure hopes that Morrison's regeneration and his new status as a magnetic puzzle are just the mist's little moving-in gift for them, because this is creepy, _creepy_ bullshit. 

He looks up. He jumps. Reaper is pressed against the inside of his cell, hands spread, staring. Something about his expressive shoulders looks wrong for anger, but since his face is covered, it could mean anything. Jesse thinks. Reaper would have had to reform before they could burn him into mist again. So he'd probably seen Jesse. He'd probably seen red. He knows what they're doing. Jesse can't imagine if he feels anything for them, if he feels robbed.

Jesse reaches up. Pinches his fingers. Mimes pulling off a mask and throwing it.

_I know you're in there._

Reaper's mask skitters across the floor like a thrown plate. After two dispersals and reformings, his face should be webbed with black, like mold. He's not. He looks like Gabriel, but his face is blank. His eyes are dead. His head swings back and forth between Jack and Jesse. His eyes don't track, fixed stare. His face is drawn with pain. He slides down the glass slowly. Just when Jesse is about to panic, they took too much of _him_ and Gabriel is dying, Gabriel rolls his shoulders against the glass and stills, his back to them, his head in his hands.

Jesse looks to Winston and Mercy. Winston keeps looking from the readouts to Jesse, as if trying to figure out what he's seeing. Jesse knows he probably reads like pain. Hell, Jack must. Jesse offers a quick thumbs-up. There's wires and tubes and shit blocking his view of Genji.

He's a host now. He's locked in for the duration, he might as well get comfortable. Jesse waves his lighter at the landing pad, so nobody panics when they see smoke rising. Winston gives him a long, annoyed look. Jesse shrugs. He lights up and breathes. The smoke is irritating, prickling his lungs with pins. Cold spikes in his chest as he coughs. They have other things to frown at. They drop the gas in Reyes' cell and knock him out. Jesse feels his shoulders relax.

Winston goes in first, since even Gabriel Reyes can't instantly kill a gorilla with his bare hands. He tags him with a spider (Jesse winces, but it's necessary, they have to know) and slices a long line up his forearm with a scalpel. It's a shallower cut than Mercy gave Jack. Winston is less comfortable working with flesh. He's even less comfortable hurting the people he's trying to save.

Jesse sees it anyway. The mist-stuff no longer serves for flesh and blood; healthy red wells up and starts to drip. Then oily darkness gleams through blood. Winston wipes his arm clean. There's nothing but smooth skin. It sealed Gabriel's flesh together as if excusing itself, withdrawing back to privacy.

Winston takes Reaper's coat gingerly. Jesse had told them there were no holsters, but Winston still stops when he sees that. The coat's not like the shotguns, carried with Gabriel through his first resurrection, but they're still a containment issue because they've been dissolved and reformed so many times. Nobody knows what they are now. Winston tosses the coat down by the mask. Mercy is arguing with him, sweeps of her arm, a thump of the staff on the ground.

Jesse knows it's going to take one last host. Gabriel's going into smoke too easily, as if he could do it himself, if he wants. But if they keep vaporizing him, he's eventually going to lose the ability to reform. At least until someone dies. Maybe, in order to take its power, that death will need to happen close to him. Maybe it will just need to be close to Jesse or Jack. Nobody's sure. The Shimadas get downright snappish if someone asks about the dragons in comparison. 

Jesse coughs. The smoke is annoying him, almost as bad as when he first started. (Decades ago, now.) Mercy wins the argument. Winston steps outside the cell and crosses to the console. Mercy sets aside two syringes and a scalpel. She unbuckles Gabriel's chest armor and tosses it after the coat. Gabriel's skin without that flickering gray effect, like the indistinct top of a flame, is what Jesse did this for.

Mercy tugs off his glove and drops it. Wipes down his chest and her hands, like she needs to worry about infecting the creeping mist in him. Sterilizes her hands. With economical motions, she shoves a needle into his heart. With a second, she injects herself in the vein. Hanzo steps onto the shuttle and grabs the case. Ana joins him, tranq darts ready. Mercy does not look up. Jesse can see a silvery glint in her other hand: the scalpel. She tucks her hands into Gabriel's, laces their fingers together. Her elbows move twice, and the silver flash rises into the light. She tucks it into her sleeve. She's gray already as she starts to slump down.

Jesse once was sitting on the back of a transport, looking over the little backwater shithole they'd just pacified. There'd been a woman there among the rubble, digging frantically for a little portable stove. She'd been gaunt, filthy, and he'd just been thinking she must be desperate to cook for her kids when she'd matter-of-factly pulled out some vials and cooked up her hit then and there. She'd cooled it into a spike, driven it into the stump of her arm. Still in the open, to be eaten by bugs or to be hit by a transport or to fall onto some terrible infection in the wreckage, she'd gone limp into a paradise only she could see. 

He wishes it wasn't so clearly in his mind, but even through two layers of safety glass, Mercy looks like she's compelled to her next hit of salvation. He wishes they hadn't let her atone like that. It's exactly the sort of over-hopeful, overcommitted gesture that must have loosed all of this in the first place. They should have gone back to Jesse; he could take more of this. It doesn't hurt, it's not even as cold now.

He nearly misses Mercy's revival. It's small and weak compared to his and Jack's. It's probably the small entry point or her sliced palm, their skin together, compared to a full-body rain on his skin. But he can see her breathing again. She rolls over, drags herself towards the door.  

Gabriel sits up.

Mercy pushes herself up against the door, looking at him. Gabriel, painfully slow, puts his weight on his knees. Then he's still. Jesse had kind of figured that Gabriel's own will wasn't pushing him forward much, that the mist was what was driving Reaper. But there's not much space between them, if he's wrong. That dead, flat stare is raising the hairs on his neck.

Winston, still gloriously quick on the trigger, dumps tranquilizing gas on both of them. Jesse lights his next cigarette off the butt of the first. They all watch Winston hauls Mercy's inert ass out of the cell and into the last one. He has to fold a wing under the suit to fit her comfortably on the stupid cot, and straps her like he hasn't seen that fail twice. Jesse shakes his head, betting she'll roll herself off. What's wrong with the floor, seriously? 

They're going to have to stay separated for twenty-four hours, under tight observation to watch for anything unusual in their brain patterns, whether that's rage or synchronicity. Jack and Jesse are leaving Gibraltar until they're sure it's permanent. If there's any Reaper left they don't know about, they don't want him to have an easy way to take it back from them before Winston puts him in space. So, separation. Then...

Jesse doesn't know what then.

He wants to see Gabriel face to face. Try to get some words out of him. Try to know how he is, what he's feeling. Certainty stops him. After his own stay in the dark, he knows better than to think he's the one able to haul Gabriel out of there. There's no man alive that can drag him down faster. Zenyatta was able to help Genji back to life. He's the best they've got.

Jesse coughs smoke. He catches himself eyeing it, dreading black. He glances up to see everyone staring, even Genji. He tosses the cigarette down and stomps it. Settles back on the pathetic excuse for a cot and waits for them to move him and Morrison to the more accommodating cells on the plane.

He could have used the rest of that cigarette.

The things they've lost to this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Children are more vulnerable to post-drowning complications than adults. It's called "secondary" or "dry" drowning, although really it's still just drowning. Treatment is possible, so long as the blood oxygen doesn't drop low enough to cause brain damage. Technically, any child that's breathed water is at risk, even if they didn't have trouble getting out of the pool.
> 
> Things we learn while researching fanfic!


	15. Photic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shadows and hazes, coughs and breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW? Some suicidal content? I should probably give up and tag for that at this point.

It doesn't hurt when he wakes up.

It's cold, but it's a still cold; it's not a constant blizzard tearing his body apart, it's a dark and quiet place. He opens his eyes in it. Everything is laid out, clear and clean, he can see it all.

And then the sky falls in on him.

It was him.

It was him.

**

Reyes has very few ways to deal with guilt. This is a tsunami. He caves under it. They give him food; he has no appetite. They offer him water; he turns his face away. They talk to him. He can barely hear them.

Caspar. Liao. Rudnick. Arless. Harper. Marley. Lytvyn. Kahue. Lockton. Vargas. Reinhardt. All blasted to death, reduced to red glows, absorbed. He can still remember the haunting beauty of them. He can still remember the rush. He can barely remember their faces. Their faces didn't matter, at the time. Death in burning, birth of death. Fire of destruction, fire of revenge. 

**

It's undone. He can't rest.

He kicks on the door until someone comes; he doesn't even know who. He just starts talking about Talon.

Ana's voice, asking questions, stopping him when he tries to go fast, just drop the weight. Ana keeping him on track, letting him report when he has the pieces together enough to give them like that, helping him collect all the loose parts. He gives everything he can: places, contacts, sources, weapons dealers, logistics steps in the chain, shell companies, associates, dates, missions, mentioned code names and names. Suspicions, conjectures, hints. Everything he can think of until even he knows he is just repeating himself. 

It's still undone, but he sleeps. Heavily.

**

Time passes. 

**

They keep him alive. They knock him out (they're observing him, he knows) when they need to rehydrate him. They talk to him at the door. He ignores them; he's thinking.

It doesn't hurt anymore. That's unbelievable. He sits quietly, his head almost empty, each breath following the next. With every instant that passes, he thinks he's about to feel himself dissolve, and it never happens. It's so amazing he puts his head down and cries somewhere in the middle of the third night.

Eventually, he tries to reach outside his body with the mist. It's locked in his body, under his skin, too diminished to answer his command. He tries to fall into it; there's an awful shifting pain like fire down his spine. It feels as if it cannot carry his flesh with it, cannot burst into air.

They gas him, of course. When he wakes up he feels bruised. It's gone within the hour. His effort knocks nothing free.

**

He doesn't stay in it because there's nothing keeping him there but him. So he starts thinking, nonstop, replaying everything that happened with his own mind. Looking at it. Integrating it.

It is all he can do. He is like a survivor after a storm, dragging pieces towards the gaping cellar where everything stood. Reaper knew what he lost; he could list it. Gabriel understands what he has lost.

He is still and silent while awake. He sleeps like the dead.

**

He notices the shape moving at the door in more than just fact: that's a person, they can talk. "Where is Jack?" he asks. Genji has come by to drop off food. Gabriel will leave it there. They have been doing this for days.

"Far away," says Genji.

"Angela?"

"Closer."

"Jesse."

"Further."

"Hurting?"

Genji shakes his head once. "No one's flesh has run like yours." 

Genji wasn't the mind behind that whole gambit, he knows. He and that clean-cutting, magnificent green dragon would not use that kind of strategy. They evade, or they attack; they do not bring their enemy home, do not fragment it or quarantine it. There is no use trying to provoke Genji. His control is excellent. He will walk away.

"Why didn't you stop him?" He would have. Reaper would have. They should have listened to him, since almost any plan would have been better than _I know what, let's all infect ourselves with the misty unknown life-eating curse!_ And they all said _good idea!_

He hates them.

Just because it seems to have worked doesn't mean it wasn't a staggeringly bad idea, poorly inspired, full of hubris, and with a world of disastrous possibilities. What if they'd broken the poorly-understood limits on its growth? It had liked him (he remembers Metis claiming it was mimicking his shadow when it formed a mirror of his wrist - he should have seen its shape was wrong for a shadow weak and distorted by indoor lights. It liked him, it liked him even then.) What if it decided it liked spreading? What if it had been more powerful than anticipated and he and Jack had both-

Thankfully, Genji's response is faster than his exhausting the possibilities. "You mean, why didn't I stop any of them." Genji is so god damned polite and even.

He shakes his head. "They wouldn't have listened to you. Jesse would." It's not Genji's fault Jesse died. But he saw that (remembers Reaper's shock, remembers the red globe wreathed with black, remembers bracing himself for it, not wanting it, before he realizes the black is pulling it into Jesse's body in reclamation-)

(-Mercy's doing, giving the curse she gave him to Jesse. And Overwatch judged Blackwatch for torture. Winston's lasers to Reaper's skull had been a kindness.)

He's sitting on the bed. Genji stalks forward and crouches, lower than a level with him to be comfortable. "I have played this game with Hanzo," he says in a soft tone. "I will not play it with you. Your burden is off your shoulders. You cannot blame it now."

Then, of course, he walks away.

Well, at least Reyes had called it.

**

"Kill me," he snarls at Winston. "Get the rest of it out, and kill me."

The monkey's face is expressive. He schools it to somberness. "We don't have any reason to think anyone else could host it." Gabriel tunes out of the rest of it. Waits until he's alone.

The walls are padded next time he wakes up, and they have some kind of impact-triggered biotic field built somewhere. He's healed already, it's still part of him enough to heal him. He can feel it tamed enough that its dissolution and rebuilding of him is just background to his breathing. The biotic field doesn't matter, although through his knowledge of the mist he can feel the trembling of its power, map its edges better than by its faint glow. It's Mercy's work, he knows. She just can't quit.

"Can you-" he asks later, when Hanzo brings food.

"No." Hanzo doesn't even let him ask. Hanzo sure as shit ain't going to take the mist, he's got a dragon and Gabriel's pretty sure there would be an unseen war.

They do have reason to think Morrison would wear it better. Jack's always been the golden boy, he's always been the one -  but isn't that because Gabriel has always been moving around him, doing all the shit the heroes cannot do?

He'd like to blame Angela. Placing blame is like stacking sand. It just pours everywhere, mostly back on him.

**

Eating and drinking are strange. Fake. He's not quite human enough to need them. He's not mist enough not to need them. The mist isn't going to let him die, it isn't going to let him drift too far from functioning. Absently, he decides to see how far he can starve it with him.

It doesn't seem to like his decision. It drifts him with cold. But he was in harmony with it only as Reaper. So now, since Reaper is gone, he fights it.

"You know," Winston says, when he wakes up hydrated (and fed by a tube, judging by the taste in his mouth -  there are worse ways to be force-fed, he'll accept it) "theoretically, if it were to leave you, it would flood to the others."

He starts eating and drinking, when he can rouse the energy.

**

Zenyatta has been visiting. His mood never changes. His calm never shatters. He's just what he is. Zenyatta does not need to sleep, he is always in the same emotional state, whether it's late or early. He always tolerates Reyes' rage in the exact same manner. Reyes hates him like any Omnic trying to mesh with humanity, like they had a right, after what they did.

That rage wears through fast, given what he did.

So eventually, when Zenyatta asks, Gabriel talks. At first it's not even connected, just what his head was full of, the things that red out other thoughts, even now.

**

Zenyatta has a lot to say about anger.

At first Reyes is barely tuned in, and it all sounds alike. But he hears a lot about _fire_ metaphors that turn out to be slightly different from each other, when he actually listens.

"Sometimes," Zenyatta says, "we immerse ourselves in anger because it is the safest emotion."

So Reyes tells him what he thinks about that. Zenyatta takes it, and his response is measured, thoughtful, as if Reyes were politely exchanging ideas. Reyes gets an idea of where Genji's calm had come from.

He gets a slow, grudging respect for the Omnic's ability to unbraid and unravel feelings, better than he's got, even if he's the human. Of course Reyes hates him. For being an Omnic, for understanding anyway. Zenyatta just takes that, takes his hate and rage as if Reyes were handing him rocks and loaves of bread. Things he had no use for, but accepted, held until he was ready to politely drop them.

**

He knows his body's decided to live again, because he has a dream about Jesse.

It's good. It's powerful. He wakes up panting. He hopes Winston missed that; the monkey's hiding from him, but it's still awkward. He remembers Athena being tactful. It's not like the AI hasn't seen worse. She reigned while the base was in full operation.

He cleans up and tries to sleep again. It eludes him. He remembers Jesse's fear of the mist. He wonders if it's hurting him.

**

"The kind of pain that you do each other, and will do, can never balance out," Zenyatta says. "There is no end to the cycle." Gabriel leans against the wall. Zenyatta's soft voice could be right next to him. "Forgiveness is an act of love for the self. It allows a path to peace that the one who did you harm, even if he regrets what he has done, might never open. It is the planting of hope. Do not expect too much of yourself. Give yourself only what you can."  

There's silence, broken only by a long, sliding sound.

Lucio Correia dos Santos slides in front of the door. Zenyatta glides behind him. Lucio stops. Gabriel shakes off the last of sleep. Lucio's eyes have the over-brightness, all gray metal and glistening glass, of preliminary cyber-prosthetics. Placeholders. Gabriel estimates these as not giving color, just depth and contrast. Color comes later. Rewiring the brain and replacing lost nerves is not a one-step process. Lucio's jaw is lifted, mouth set. Reyes doesn't even bother pushing the blanket off. The silence hangs for a long moment.  

"I can't _even_ right now," Lucio decides, wheels, and heads off.

"What are you looking at?" Gabriel demands as Zenyatta observes him. "Don't you have something else to be doing?"

Zenyatta goes after Lucio.

**

He thinks about how weird this is, fundamentally. He's smashed Omnics for looking at him, back when the Crisis was still in full swing. He's taken apart hundreds. Ordered the deaths of thousands. And now there's one in his head, and he's _letting_ it dig around.

They're discussing captivity. It started with his body turned to mist. Then it was his calm at not being allowed out. He knows he's still... weakened... because if they opened the cell, he doesn't think he'd bother walking out. He has no plan. He has no goals. He is unsure of the things that he wants.  

"You have accepted it more completely than we meant it," Zenyatta says. "You are being held for protection, not punishment. You haven't asked for contact with your own former captive."

Gabriel freezes. "Don't you know what I did to him? Where's the protection?"

"He doesn't remember. Wasn't that intentional? You chose a drug that would have an amnesiac effect."

That stops him. If Jesse's saying he doesn't remember, it's either because he doesn't, or he doesn't want to talk about it. If he doesn't want to talk about it, they won't get it out of Gabriel. "He just, I just... quit working towards a goal." He can feel his breathing pick up. When he sees the worst of it, he relives it.

"Take a moment to slow your thoughts. Be aware of where you are." Zenyatta sounds utterly peaceful. He hums softly. Finally, when Reyes is sitting still, breathing evenly, looking down: "Your choice not to act is telling. Inaction is a better path than intentionally doing damage."

Intentionally. "It didn't fucking work."

"His own memory... skips places. He had a window to reclaim them, and he let that window pass. He has chosen to let the storm go by. You were caught in the cycle of aiming harm at others, and hurting yourself."

Gabriel laughs, short and toneless. "It's all here, waiting for me."

Zenyatta hums.

**

"Ana hasn't come in a long while now. What happened?" 

Hanzo looks at him. "You spoke of Talon. Some of that is already passed on to those who need it. Some must be verified." 

He nods. He hopes it's not just Ana, but he doesn't want to know; he doesn't want to know who's the security if he gets out of the cell. It could be all of them, it could be Hanzo is a hologram and all that's on the rock with him is Athena with lasers, it doesn't matter.

**

Weeks later, at breakfast, Hanzo drops a datapad on the tray before he shoves it through.

Reyes is more interested in thought than food, and lifts it. It's incredibly simple; it's programmed with one thing, a game of chess. They play three games. Reyes is curious the first one, allowing Hanzo to win. He's testing the second one. On the third, he realizes he is angry. He shakes off his apathy and crushes Hanzo.

"Tell him not to play my game," he tells Genji, who is silently retrieving the untouched breakfast. The visor turns towards him, startled. Genji damn near doesn't leave lunch behind on his hurry to see how his brother has engaged Reaper.

The next time he picks up the datapad, Go has been loaded onto it, and the board is waiting. Reyes reads through the rules very carefully. Hanzo is allowing him the first move, so he starts them off.

Hanzo unrelentingly kicks his ass four times by dinnertime. His lack of mercy is refreshing after Zenyatta's constant restraint. Reyes eats, to clear his head, and applies himself. He draws blood once before bedtime.

"Did they do anything to Talon yet?" he asks Hanzo in the morning, when he brings the tray.

"Yes."

Reyes keeps pacing. He knows he's healing, because the cell seems tiny. Hanzo is silent, watching him. He knows Hanzo is cautious, and does not wish to give away something Reaper could rise up and use. Reyes shrugs, picks up the datapad, and starts trading moves. Hanzo settles quietly against the hallway wall and reinforces a strategic advance. Reyes begins a series of moves that appear pointless. He can see it in Hanzo's eyes when he catches the significance.

Combat: give, take, necessary sacrifices, management of resources, psychology of the opponent. He forgets the omnipresent cold.

After a while, he reaches for the tray.

**

Time passes.

**

Standing, leaning against the glass. Zenyatta is just as casual, safely on the other side. "Out of everyone," Reyes is telling him, "Jesse would have survived Reaper."

Zenyatta's only motion is a sequential blink of lights across his face. "You have stated that your purpose was destructive. Towards his sense of self, if nothing else."

"I have stated," Gabriel growls, "that I ran out of moves against him." It still awes him, looking back with his mind intact, reviewing the confrontation over Hana's unbroken skull: Jesse fought _dirty._

Especially that constant trick of Jesse's, making him think Jesse was stable, someone he could lean on, just before folding and vanishing. Undercutting. Reyes would have seen that coming, but Reaper... Jesse blinded Reaper.

"I think you might not be acknowledging the depth of your own feelings. Openness with one's own-"

"I love him like a part of me, you metal piece of shit."

Zenyatta lets his rage pass, as always. Gabriel notices he doesn't revisit that ground.  

**

Time passes.

**

Hana is there when he wakes up. Brigitte is there, too, keeping her company, but when he sits up, the brunette leaves quietly. Whatever she thinks, she wishes it locked behind her face, and Gabriel stops thinking about her. 

Gabriel does the same thing that he did with Lucio: he waits. He doesn't bother with poker face, he doesn't bother with body language. Hana's here for her say.

"Were you going to kill me?"

He nods. He doesn't try to explain it was Reaper's choice. He's quite sure that as a man who went through the SEP program and headed a group of agents, he's the subject of weekly, if not daily, briefings and updates. Either she's been paying attention when Winston and Zenyatta inevitably share their notes with the team, or she hasn't. "Do you think I'd hurt you now, without that door there?"

"No." He nods. She doesn't open the door. He doesn't get up and try it. "Were you watching my streams?"

"Yes. I went two back before you joined Overwatch." She mutters something unhappy in Korean. "You've stopped?"

"All I'm streaming now is playing around in a new beta for a strategy game." She grimaces. "I've taken over. I'm ruling like a benevolent dictator. You know: being best of the best, so nobody even bothers to stand up against you."

They are both silent.

"You don't ask me about him."

"If he wanted to send a message, he would. I'm the one in the cell. That's how it works."

She looks at him. Looks at the walls around him. Her gaze is telling him what she's thinking. They are observant jailors, but despite his confinement he has spoken to almost everyone.

"I know what I did to him," Reyes says, low. "Reaper hunted him. He went home, didn't he?" He watches her think about what to say. "Then he wants his own company. Let him do what he wants."  

"We do a lot of that," she says. Testing, she puts her hand on the door. He looks away. She leaves.

**

Reyes has just set up everything he needs to drag Hanzo through bitter defeat. Hanzo suddenly concedes.

Reyes growls in annoyance. He didn't want a fucking concession. The Go board folds. The chess set opens. Hanzo's tired of teaching him Go, he wants to practice chess. Fine.

Hanzo's gotten a damn sight better at chess, he realizes in five moves.

 _This isn't how he thinks,_ he realizes in seven moves. Did Winston take the board?

Thirty moves into the game, he decides it's not Winston, because Winston would have won or lost by now. They've decimated their armies going after each other. They're about five moves away from someone's defeat. He's captured the queen but has a bishop and a knight left. He puts his enemy in check. Loses his piece in turn, and he knows who it is. He reaches for the counterattack.

He stops. He knows who it is. He doesn't want to play; he doesn't want to fight. He taps the button to concede. He taps the button to turn off the datapad and tosses it to the end of the bed. Waits.

Morrison was probably up in Winston's lab. It's a while before he steps into view. Hanzo is escorting him. Reyes knows why before Jack reaches up and tugs the door open. Jack comes in like this has always been a visiting room, instead of Gabriel's little space. Gabriel stands up.

Morrison's weight hits suddenly enough that they half-fall on the bed. Gabriel catches them from hitting the wall with one arm. (Part of his brain ticks through the survivors from SEP and he realizes: there's no one with their kind of strength anymore.) 

"Stop making shit plans," Gabriel says into the side of Jack's head.

"Okay. You too."

"Okay."  

Everything burned; they died; he killed Jack, Jack threw him through a - he still can't believe he got thrown through an aircraft engine turbine, how did they even _get that in there_. They had to disassemble the dome to get him out. He still remembers the bizarre rise of his prison through the air, like the yolk being levitated from an open egg.

He gives up cataloguing. He's too exhausted. "Jack." All the shit they've done, all the damage they've thrown at each other; he doesn't know who he is now. He just knows he's not fighting anymore. He can't. It's... kind of like being dead, but not as boring. "I can't tell you how shitty that catastrophe of a plan was. I mean it. I can't."

"I know."

"There was nothing stopping it from _eating you alive_. There still isn't. I don't know why it hasn't hollowed us both out. Do you think I wanted it? Do you think I didn't fight it? Do you think I didn't try to tame it? Do you know how many times, just in that first year, I lost?"

"Angela and I both were over-invested. Winston couldn't stop us, because our friend had just died." Jack shrugs. "I know. The further out we get from it, the more I see that we weren't thinking straight. But Reaper's mask and coat are still hanging up in their case. You're still here."

"I've seen Ana, Hana, Lucio, Winston, Genji, Hanzo, even Brigitte," Gabriel snaps. "Not Angela. You think I don't know what that means? What did it do to her?" He stops. "Jesse. Did he really go home?"  

"It reacted badly with the longevity serums she's been testing. It hurt her for a while. She's back on her feet. And yeah, Jesse went home. He pried another former Blackwatch agent loose of Talon. Your going shed a lot of-"

"Siobhan? She was barely hanging on. She was already getting recruited as a double agent. I had my own plans for that, but Talon might have caught wind themselves. I hope Jesse hasn't brought her back to this new Overwatch."  

"No."

"How long has Angela been damaged?"

"She can treat herself. She got the pain under control fast. Don't worry." Jack looks away. "We just didn't want you seeing more of that."

"You're trying to protect _me_ from _Reaper._ " 

"You haven't so much as tested the door since we put you in here," says Jack. "Gabriel Reyes. Hasn't tried a door."

"Don't give me that," Gabriel says, tone heating because he can't stand that note of pity. It feels like Jack wants a fight. "I-"

Jack locks eyes with him, steps back, and pushes the door open. Gabriel stays on the bed. A long, long silence hangs in the air.

"I'm sorry," Jack says. "When-" 

"You're the last person who should be apologizing," Reyes says. "I don't want apologies, I don't want revenge, I don't want - Jack. I'm _done_." Jack shakes his head. That gets him up on his feet, shoving his fingers against Jack's chest. "I know what it takes before I rip the life out of you. Do you understand that?"

"I know. We got the powers of gods. We throw them around, and the consequences come right back. Things break, organizations shatter, people lose themselves, people die, people come back to life. It feels like we can't control any of it." Jack shrugs. "We just hang on. But Talon's still out there, and if we're getting sense slammed into us... they're still using Widowmaker like they own her. They're looking at where we've been. They're looking at what we can do. And sooner or later, they're going to reach for it."

He's the kid in basic listening to some idiot going on about why they need to pick themselves up and go after it one more time. He's on the floor in SEP, about to refuse the next injection, with an earnest voice trying to rally him between puking. It's the thousandth time Jack has done this. Gabriel responds, as he always has. His responses are in a range, and it's not unheard of for one to be:

"Hey. Fuck you." Slumping back. Not sitting back down.

 Jack reaches out a hand and tugs towards him. Backs up, pulling. Gabriel moves.

Somehow, they step through the door together.


	16. Pelagic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New alliances, and terrifying friendships, come together.

_After he lands and unpacks, before he stands for a long time, wondering, before Hanzo shrugs and holds out his datapad, this happens:_

_Jack knocks._

_"Come in."_

_When he opens the door, he's staring down the barrel of a Bastion unit. It's painted a clean, frosty blue, and the bullet feed has been replaced with hoses, but it's beyond a doubt a Bastion with cannon ready. Mei and Lucio recovered by the same stretch of forest. Mei explored it._

_"Mei, can you two stand down?"_

_"We are down!" Her artificial arm is the same blue as her research assistant's armor. She's wearing a black tank top and pajama bottoms. "This is snowblower mode. You can come in!"_

_Jack leans in the doorway and looks around. D.Va's mecha is folded down and piled with pillows, inside and out. D.Va has a foot on Brigitte's hammer so Brigitte can paint her toenails. Zarya is deadlifting her cannon, working out some tension so she can have some fun. There's a bowl of popcorn on the table. Lucio gives a little wave, tapping his fingers meaningfully on his speakers._

_"Nobody has to do team defense: slumber party," Jack says, more quietly. "The living quarters is still locked, and you know Athena is watching him. He can't change to mist. There's a tracking device wrapped around his head."_

_"And he's out," says Lucio. "It's what we want to do. It's what we're doing. It's a better coping mechanism than drinking."_

_"Or we could take up smoking," adds Hana. "But we're not. We're having makeovers."_

_"Anything I can do?"_

_"Frozen pizza in the fridge," says Lucio. "If you don't mind?"_

_"Sure."_

**

They talk for hours.

Gabriel can see that Jack is being very careful. Speaks in wide hints about the mist, about Jack's getting used to it. He can feel Jack weighing his reactions, feel him choosing his words very carefully.  

They talk about Talon. That's more intensely covered. It's more easily mined. Jack was careful what information he gave, and what information he kept. He was less discreet in sharing it. Once or twice, he had to resort to a tip line, when the data needed to get to someone Overwatch had never dealt with.

Then they talk about the past, very far back: first signing up, the first battles, the first time they thought the Omnic Crisis was something they would survive; the first time they thought it was something they would win.

They walk back to the cell when it's over. Reyes hears the door shut behind him, and sleeps heavily. In the morning, he pushes gently on the door.

It's still standing open when Genji comes with breakfast. Gabriel has gone back to sleep.  

"They seal the living quarters every night," Genji says. "They all knew when this door was no longer locked."

Gabriel shakes off sleep. Grunts without looking at him.  

"And I am not a servant. Use your feet."

Yeah. Okay. "Thanks."

Two nights later, he sleeps under the stars.

**

"Spar with me," Jack says. In his smile, that blond young recruit.

Sometimes he wakes up to the shotgun's roar. The aftertaste of regret, the fact of himself almost breaking through. Jack's chest a cored-out mess anyway. "Fuck, no."

He doesn't want to fight anymore.

He doesn't know who that makes him. He's not even ready for that yet. He's just not fighting.

**

There's a routine. He walks in, slowly, by the side door, where it's most obvious someone's coming in. Nods to whoever's there (breakfast is the least coordinated meal.) Gets his coffee. Winston, Ana, Hanzo, Genji, Jack, Zenyatta, and Angela are on the talk-to list. Hana is, but only if she looks up and holds his gaze. Lucio, Brigitte, Mei, and Zarya tend to eat together no matter the time of day. They ignore him, and they get left alone. 

"Talon is rebuilding, by now," Gabriel says to Jack.

"We know," says Brigitte without looking up from her cereal. It's a rare break from ignoring him. He nearly glances over.

"It was inevitable," Angela says. She's still paler than she should be, and moves more slowly. Whatever energy she used, the mist is not done eradicating its effects on her body. Gabriel finds it hard to look at her. He does his best not to show it.

"We're still gathered up, all in one place," he answers.  

"We're a presence now," Lucio says from beside Brigitte. "While you were in the basement, getting..." he lets that trail off. Reyes knows he's not a great target right now, and the pity stings. "We got noticed. Right now, we can't go hide anyway. Talon was trying to set up their very own Doomfist, and Vishkar nearly signed him up as their protector. Guess whose corporate asses got saved from a world of bad PR and a terrorist agenda?" He throws a hand wide. "So now we have Vishkar on our side, making picking us up for Petras violations a little awkward. And we even have an envoy coming in that we get to babysit on our missions and make feel important." The thump of his hand on the table clatters his cereal spoon to the floor. Chastened, he accepts the spoon Mei passes him and resumes eating.  

Interesting things have been happening while he's been... getting. "Then having me here is a liability."

"We got nowhere to offload you." Lucio shrugs. "And we don't want Talon catching up-"

"Enough," says Jack.

Gabriel drinks his coffee.  

**

He knows Tracer and Torbjorn know, but getting their messages is still a shock.

He knows his responses are inadequate. He doesn't know how to bridge that gap. He doesn't know if anyone does. If Zenyatta would have a similar problem if he were wiped over by a god program and then returned.

Maybe he never will know how.

**

He doesn't know how he knows Jesse's back. He just knows.

Maybe it's the way everyone's acting differently in the morning, out of their routines. Maybe it's something else. He doesn't want to think about it. He just goes.

He doesn't see Jesse, doesn't have a communicator or a datapad. So he goes to the kitchen, because everyone ends up there eventually. Gets coffee. Pours cream in it. Sits. Waits. He can hear Brigitte practicing outside. Her mallet is smaller than Reinhardt's hammer, but he still remembers the first time it woke him up: he'd jumped to his feet because Reinhardt was out there, fighting.

Eventually he puts the backs of his fingers to the cup. It's gone cold. He dumps it. Makes new. Adds cream. Sits down.

Zarya and Brigitte are calling back and forth. He knows they feel safer, because he's been out of sight this long and nobody's come cautiously looking. He absently folds his fingers into a fist, looking down at his knuckles. Reaper had been too hurt, too enraged, to understand much of anything. He'd tried to keep Jesse with strength alone. And of course he'd hurt him, terribly.

A memory rises: Gabriel, stripped naked in a tropical hotel, hiding in a secure little bubble from a mad AI, dripping sweat, standing in front of a rickety air conditioner that couldn't be turned up any more, his arms folded over it, head bowed into the blast. Because _fucking_ McCree took the _one_ goddamn shower. For all his greater strength, all his force of personality, Gabriel always seems to find McCree like a rock that hunkers stubbornly down and lets him fall right over it. Hit the ground jarred. Rock's fine, of course.

He remembers standing by his desk, flicking the medals in his hands over as if they could tell him there were some mistake.

 That, of course, is the moment McCree walks in the kitchen.

Gabriel's thoughts flicker away like startled birds. McCree looks at him. Weathered, scruffy, just like he was pictured. Looks chasing across his face; Gabriel can't handle any of them right now. He reaches over, grabs the cup, and shoves it across the table.

McCree walks over and looks down at it like Gabriel had offered him a half-played game of Go, or a secret, coded message. Then he ignores it. Comes around the table. Sits down by Gabriel, throws an arm around his shoulders, and leans.

Gabriel reaches back. There is no way not to. There's no cold. There's no extra sense of touch, no ability to test the edges of Jesse's... aura? the word, the mysterious sense memory, is gone when he reaches for it, and he lets it go. No curiosity for the feel of the life in his skin. The rough cloth draped around his shoulder is good against Gabriel's cheek, obnoxiously scratchy. He's been climbing in the sun, or lifting something, his muscles are hot. His bones are broad and heavy, solid. Is this how he'd used to feel? Gabriel can't remember; he's been under too long.

He remembers Jesse shuddering at the cold. He pulls back, shrugging until Jesse lets go. Moves away, head in his hands.

"Boss-"

"Drink your coffee." There's quiet. He doesn't know if Jesse is or not. "Jesse." All this time he's had two main emotions available, rage and love; and now panic is coming back to shade the picture. "Are you all right?"

"We're all doin' a lot better." Which is comforting but sure as hell isn't an unequivocal _yes._ "Boss-"

It's the hand on his shoulder that does it. He gets up. "Don't touch me." He doesn't know he's going to say it until it's out of his mouth. Jesse gives him a long look, head tipped. Gabriel locks his jaw. Jesse's got whatever-this-damn-thing-is locked into his flesh, who knows if he can even be killed anymore? And Gabriel and his former power over death still can't fucking un-hit. "I'm sorry."

Jesse stares him in the eye and takes a swallow of coffee. Puts the cup down. "I know you're pretty torn up right now," he says. "I get it. But what you're forgettin' is I know you. You think I'm goin' to say 'Reaper killed Reinhardt' an' not put all that craziness right beside it?"

Reaper had at least been _enemies_ with Reinhardt, simple, clean, clear as a noonday shadow. He cannot take this; all the quiet time in the cell couldn't get him ready for this. He gets up and starts for the door.

"Boss." Gabriel stops. "I'm going to be around when you get back."

He nods. He goes to find Zenyatta.

**

They have formed support groups, Reyes realizes. He is scraped too raw by the endless talking to a damn Omnic to judge this, or himself for attending. He is not sure if the others realize the way they are organizing, or if they just think they are talking to friends.   

Support group Dreamed Big, Fucked It All: Angela, Jack, and Gabriel. First they talk about what's still left, colored by what could have been. When Ana starts attending, they discuss general things, or break up early. Finally, they end up all talking about what's still left, and what's building up from it.

Support group Reaper Attacked Us And Killed Our Friend And Now He's De-Reapered But We're Not Pretending That's Okay: Lucio, Mei, Hana, Brigitte, Zarya.  Early on, sometimes Jack joins them. Zarya has obviously been Brigitte's workout coach so that Brigitte can move in that armor. Reinhardt's armor was much... spikier than what Brigitte makes. It has the trim lines of Zarya's armor and the solidity of Torbjorn's best guidance.

Support group I Killed My Brother, And He's Right Over There, But It Still Happened: Hanzo, Jack, and Gabriel. It is an awkward group. It is the most alcoholic by light-years. They still meet.

Support group I Am Still Not Sure This Damn Mist Won't Possess Me: Jack, Gabriel, Jesse, Angela. Ana as an honorary member. Gabriel starts to like tea. Jesse starts to bring cookies.  

Support group What A Goddamned Asshole: The most fluid. Core members: Genji, Winston, Hana and Brigitte. Often Jesse. Often Jack. Never Gabriel. Never Hanzo.

Gabriel goes to whatever group is meeting and will let him in, but he is not alone with Jesse again.

**

The days tick by, harmless as wind over grass. Vishkar is enjoying a show of power against the UN, and will not relinquish their location or allow access to their part of Gibraltar. Travel is not safe. Contact with the outside world is only safe through D.Va's uplink or Vishkar's routes.

**

Something in him will not hold up now when he tests it. He does not want to fight. He does not want to be in any situation where he has to kill. He still is left with a lifetime of strategic thinking. Go is his only outlet. Without it, he is devastatingly bored.

"D.Va is sad," Hanzo says.

Reyes has been sitting, waiting, for an hour for his datapad to buzz. "Your move."

Hanzo taps his screen. The datapad buzzes. "I concede."

Zenyatta has again encouraged him to be open with his emotions. Hanzo listened intently when he spoke of it earlier. "I hate it when you concede," Reyes says with a broad smile. "I want you to eat the fucking defeat."

"I _said_ ," said Hanzo, "D.Va is sad. Because we now have to route through Viskhar, this beta is the only thing she can access through her mecha without technical problems or a risk of cyberattack. It has almost hit its player cap. She has no real opponents to play against, she has conquered most of the galaxy, and her audience is spending most of their time trying to outspam each other with stupid memes." Reyes turns his head enough to catch Hanzo's expression. "I uploaded something new," Hanzo adds.

"I don't play video games." Reyes has no problem arguing with the evidence.

"Since you haven't bothered to look," Hanzo says, "you can play solely, or as a team."

Reyes picks up the datapad. He has already been added to Hanzo's team, and a name chosen. He pulls open the rules and the tutorial. Hanzo settles down patiently.

Onyx Serpent comes screaming out of the starting area and starts taking over the space ignored by D.Va's little empire. Hanzo puts together a supply network extorted from the weak. Reyes recruits allies bitter at D.Va's completely bored expression while she took over their territories. He motivates them and runs them in a tight team of space pirates.

 _omfg can we have more effort is this not serious enough what is your problem you tachyon abusing assholes_ a guild leader messages them from the shambles of his guild.

 _practice tach_ Reyes types back, and steals his shuttle. 

"You know," says Reyes, days later. They have destroyed D.Va's flagship by extorting portal technology from a small team of players who were just curious about how far they could customize the game's science gear, then opening a portal under the idle area and raining AFK players onto her favorite ship at terminal velocity, "she's a twenty-something playing for fun."

Hanzo looks up from a quick spree of shooting unallied players down into his mining colony, where he will let them go only after they've ground supplies for him. "She is not playing for fun. She is playing to keep something of hers. She is playing for her reputation. She is playing for her fame. There is nothing else she can stream." He jabs some buttons. "I think Blue Moonshard and Isis Flame are conspiring."

Reyes taps more buttons and studies the flow of goods that both are managing in their sectors. "I think you're right. Look how much cloaking technology they're building. They're going to keep raising invisible ships and then attack our flank." He smiles. "That's so cute."

Hanzo nods fondly. Then his expression kicks over to business. "It would be easy to cause infighting."

"They're both mining their power cores from sector five. Fuckers haven't upgraded to gauss weaponry. Let's flood that sector with cheap mining ships and let the new players strip them before they realize what's happening. They can cannibalize weapons off each other to survive."

"Are we going to let them live afterward?" Hanzo wonders to himself.

"Do what you want. I want to test gauss weaponry against cloaked ships."

**

D.Va argues with her stream about the capabilities of the game. She has a lengthy, public conversation with one of the physics designers, Stan, about human flesh vs. ship armor in terms of game design. She wins a series of minor skirmishes with Onyx Serpent thanks to tireless planning, perfect micro skills, and one-half of Onyx Serpent paying more attention to managing his army than his armory and mixing up Helix and Hellborn missiles. The spectacle on the screen, and the pride in her smile, cause new players to fill the beta to its limits to take her side.

Hanzo accesses his alternate account, puts the teleporter exit on a shuttle disguised as friendly, and promises to teleport a large group of them to her starbase. When they leap into the teleporter, he rains them all out of the back of the shuttle and onto her dome, destroying it.

"This is a war crime!" D.Va says to her stream, outraged. _"Stan!"_ She breathes. "Ooh! I am going to crush them!"

Reyes is sitting about ten meters away. He doesn't have his datapad open, but he is leaning over to see Hanzo's. "Practice tach," Hanzo mutters to him.

**

"I'm surprised you kept it."

It's startled out of him. Jesse came up to wash his hands, pushed his sleeve up, and there's the brand. Reaper corrected the blurred bottom edge.

Jesse glances down at it. "It wasn't his idea. He just copied in." He turns his head, about to say something else, but Gabriel isn't ready for this and has turned to talk to Ana.

Blackwatch still means something to Jesse. It might mean what it means to Gabriel. He's not ready to talk about it.

**

He is now spending his time, and his wealth of tactical experience and strategic thinking, assisting a former crime lord in giving a girl a nemesis on the internet.

Reyes accepts this. He litters her trade routes with mines and goes to take a shower. When he gets back, she's sabotaged his flagship and given his military fake orders to assemble at new locations. They spell out a very insulting message in Korean.

He can hear Hanzo laughing through the wall.

**

Vishkar has bought them time to go where they wish. They will still be more in Vishkar's pocket than Jack likes, but when they disperse, they have a window to go freely. However, Vishkar's agent will be here soon. Reyes, and all the uncomfortable secrets around him, will have to go.

"I don't know what I'll do next," Gabriel finds himself saying to I Am Still Not Sure This Damn Mist Won't Possess Me. "Talon would love to pick me up. I can't leave on my own. But I'm not staying to work for you - I'm not, Jack. Don't even think about it." He knows he still won't walk into combat.

"You're not the same person," Ana says gravely. "You will not make the same mistakes."

"They deserve better." Gabriel indicates Reaper Maimed Us and Killed Our Friend And Now He's De-Reapered But We're Not Pretending That's Okay. They are not currently meeting; they are just smacking a ball around the court. (Mei creates an ice wall for Lucio to ramp up and sink his shot.) But he still thinks their assembly proves a point. "You're just as skilled, Jack. You can teach them. Jesse can teach them. All I'm doing is giving them something to worry about."  

"You can come with me for a while," Jesse says. "I got a ranch."

"You can't go back," Gabriel sits up. Jack looks worried, too. "Do you know the kind of network Reaper found when he tried to look for you there? The law, bounty hunters, Talon... everyone is waiting for you to get comfortable in the badlands."

"Let 'em," says Jesse. "I bought land in Argentina. They got their own brand of cowboy, an' I'm right at home. Winston helped set up the security, an' the comms, so everyone can stop lookin' at me like that. Don't look like Reaper even noticed it that time he tried to shoot him down. Found a rich seasteader who wants me to teach his kids a little somethin' on survivin' a kidnappin', so I got work lined up. You can help with that."

"I'll think about it. It's your work. It's your life."

"Didn't you hear me invitin' you?"

"Maybe I didn't ask for a place with you," Gabriel says sharply, over the guilt.  

The dangerous spark in Jesse's eyes is his only warning. "Bull _shit_ ," says Jesse. "You think we're married, an' our last name is Blackwatch." Gabriel spews tea. Morrison inhales cookie crumbs. Ana chokes, covers her mouth, and snorts tea over her knuckles.  Angela looks bewildered, but her wrist slacks enough that a little dribble runs from her cup to her knee. Jesse looks as if they have all gone insane. "I the only one here that knew that?"

As if Jesse could be avoided. Gabriel puts his teacup down. "Jesse." Morrison finishes hacking crumbs. He is giving Ana a look like only she can save him. Ana shrugs. Jack turns the look on Gabriel. Gabriel shrugs. Jack sits for a long minute. He looks at Jesse and scrunches his nose. Angela pats Jack on the shoulder. Ana gets him a new cookie. Jack looks at it as if even that might be the most confusing thing in the universe.

"How long..." Jack manages. Gabriel just gulps tea.

"Dunno," says Jesse, either taking pity, or running out of patience. "We're _real_ bad at communicatin'. Since before Blackwatch bit the dust."

Their training covered the risk of forming intense emotional bonds with captors. Gabriel knows that's why Morrison's expression just cleared. It stings more than he thought it would, but he's glad for it. Jack has learned to be suspicious of him. Given that they all sat down as I Am Still Not Sure This Damn Mist Won't Possess Me, that's for the best. It's for the best. 

Ana pours him more tea, and pats his hand. "Thank you," says Gabriel politely.

As if it were the first step to understanding, Jack takes a bite of his cookie.

**

D.Va's game goes out of beta. A world of new players streams in. Onyx Serpent is no longer needed as a primary source of villainry. It folds gently, its forces dispersed back into bobbling, confused players looking for new alliances. 

Reyes leaves Gibraltar with McCree. 


	17. Surface

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Washed up" is unnecessarily pejorative.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music: FKA Twigs: Two Weeks.

It's a dream he doesn't want. It's full of dark, and peace, and Jesse's voice low but needing in his ear. He knows where they are. He hates it. There is a sound: _Mrrrrp?_

Gabriel opens an eye. There is a fuzzy... side? in his face. That thing on the top could be an ear. The cat finishes its slow rub, and turns. It sees his eye open. Its tail lifts. It is a small, brown tabby with battered ears. Right, McCree mentioned a damn barncat he didn't have the heart to keep out. _Mrrp!_

" _Bájate_ ," he commands, since the cat probably has been taught by a Spanish speaker. The cat starts a booming purr. " _Bá -_ " He gets a mouthful of fur as it rubs his face with its head. The cat does not speak Spanish. English. "Fuck you." The cat flops down by his face and rolls against him. Its purr could come from loudspeakers.

The nightmares started when he was off the peace of Gibraltar, out into a new world. The ranch is far back in time, but it is still strange. The medications might not be lasting the full night, but they sure as hell are enough to make him groggy in the mornings. McCree has resorted to deploying weapons-grade nuisances instead of putting in the time to annoy him out of bed. Gabriel groans, picking himself up. He sits on the bed for a long minute. Okay. Feet on floor. Okay. Stand -

He slides down off the bed to sit on the floor. Just another minute.

 _Prrp!_ the cat contributes, and starts chewing his hair.

Gabriel gets up.

The cat is picked up under its middle, carried to the door with its little legs stiff and toes spread in surprise, and tossed gently. It scurries towards the kitchen. Gabriel follows, pours himself coffee. He can see a group of men standing out at the edge of the garden. Cat or no cat, Jesse's let him sleep in, they're getting work started without him. Jesse's wearing a puffy white shirt and baggy pants tucked into his tall boots. He looks like the others. Gabriel knows him by the way he knocks his hat back with a hand to look up at the mountains.   

They have a rhythm. Gabriel fits himself into Jesse's life, blends in as best he can with the routine. He sits up with him now and then, drinking tequila, when the nightmares hit one or both of them. He works.

It's a real ranch; it's a slice of history, selling beef to the restaurants and rich folk in the area who want the authentic stuff, not factory-raised. Argentina weathered the Omnic Crisis in pretty good shape compared to other parts of the region. There's all kinds of small bonuses to settling down here: Jesse gets grants for keeping an authentic breed of horse, contributions from a historical society.  

Gabriel was expecting to fit in better. He's had more practice. But there's a weird part of this that doesn't seem to be acting. McCree definitely is a little out of place, but he blended fast. The _gauchos_ respect him. When _vaquero_ slips out of his mouth to Jesse, he can see them all looking at him. He's just feeling the discord of a slipping cover when there's a tiny eyeroll from one, a miniscule headshake from another. They think he doesn't get it. They go back to what they were doing. Gabriel goes back to being the non-cowboy of the ranch.

They are less curious than he was expecting. But ranch work is hard and occasionally dangerous, and there is always more of it. The men don't waste time prying into the reason behind Jesse's interest. It gives them a livelihood.

Jesse wants the ranch to be a success. Gabriel helps out with things like fence repair and trough building, first with tentative willing and then with workmanlike confidence. Talon is out there searching for signs of what happened to Reaper. Talon probably suspects the possibility that Gabriel has returned. Talon will look for him in places of power. They will look for him on a battlefield. And maybe someday, he'll be back on one. But not for a long time. For now, he's a goddamn farm hand, invisibly killing caterpillars in the grasslands.  

He notices Jesse touches: straightening his collar, or a pat on the back, a brush when he wants to get by. Jesse's unafraid of his physical presence, like Gabriel never did anything wrong.

Maybe that's how he sees it. It's not how Gabriel can see it; those are all his memories in his head, doing things he wouldn't do. He wants to find a way past it. He can't. He's a master tactician, and he's defeated by this one before he starts. He'd need to be a different person to get around this, with no gaps in how he understands people.

So they let it slide. Into something not rested enough to be peace, but calmer. Reyes doesn't know what he wants; he knows what he doesn't want, and he moves away from that. Stops the flight, when he feels far enough. Drifts away instead.

Argentina is more beautiful than he expected. It looks right for McCree, when he looks around. He starts to work outside just to see that. One night, Jesse wants a fire, so they have a fire. It's burning down in the fire pit to just a few low flickers. They're outside. The stars are out, there are a few clouds here and there. The smoke is low enough to keep most of the bugs off. "What are you thinkin' about?"

"Thinking about Overwatch saving the world." Reyes rolls his head on his shoulders. "The founders of Overwatch. Me and Morrison. Winston and Morrison. Morrison, Amari, and me. You and me, we saved a couple of nations, kept the status quo going, kept a hemisphere more boring than it would have been." He trails off.

"None of that's news to me, so it ain't news to you," McCree prompts.

"So if you look at the price tag we ran up, what was worth it?" Reyes rolls his shoulders now, trying to relax. "How do you separate out where we fucked up and where we got it right? Where's the line where we should have all quit? If I'd stepped down, would Morrison have handled the bag of snakes that was Blackwatch any better than he did me? Should Genji have wiped out his whole family but one? The world got saved."

"Y'don't. Done's done."

"I used to think that." Jesse freezes. Gabriel feels the omnipresent guilt.

"It is done." Jesse doesn't even try to make out his face in the firelight. He lays it out, like he's going to hold the conversation down with it. He must be afraid he's hearing a stirring of Reaper.

"You know I think about what could happen," Gabriel says, rather than dodge that. "And now you're hosting this shit too."

"Winston's still working on a way to trap it," Jesse says. "We could all give it up, in the end."

"We should. Morrison said it best: we had the power of the gods. Look what I did, when I was strongest."

"Lord have mercy," Jesse says. Something in his tone cuts through Gabriel's voice. Stops him dead. "So _that's_ it. You've had me worried sick." 

Gabriel stays quiet.

Jesse's silent for a little while. When he speaks, his voice is reminiscent. "Remember that time we were on the flat transport, with the scanners mounted on the top, and a cable snapped? Remember how I thought I'd broken my neck, it cracked my helmet so hard?"

"Yes." He'd thought it was a bullet, had fallen on one of his other soldiers to take him down to safety. Had expected that to be Jesse's corpse landing. He had been so fucking happy to hear him cursing.

"And for the rest of the ride we were flat on our faces, afraid to look up, thinkin' we were gonna get whipped to death if a pothole bounced us up?"

"Yeah."

"That was Reaper. All that power, but he'd broken. Made him dangerous, unpredictable, hell on earth. So when I got close, what else was going to happen, but him draggin' me down?" Jesse's shrug is expressive in the darkness. "All he could do was try to leash me up with a needle, make me feel the way he wanted. And he made me say the same things to him, over, and over, and over, 'cause he was so damn scared of not hearing it. That ain't strength. That's pathetic." 

Silence. The wind in the grass. The crackling of the fire.

"I know you," Jesse says finally.  "I know you think I'm scared of you. I ain't. You're still angry at yourself, you think you should be. I ain't. You couldn't help it. You were already gone."

Gabriel gets up. Crosses carefully around the ring of firelight. Settles down. Jesse rolls into him immediately. Gabriel's so damned used to leading them, he isn't sure what to do now. He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't have a map.

The wind styles the fire. The fire burns low. "So why'd you take it?" Gabriel asks into his hair finally, when he can speak. "You saw that. You knew that. So what in _fuck_ made you think 'oh yeah, I'll buy in?'"

"'Cause it was working. An' it wasn't working enough to stop." Jesse shrugs. "You don't stop in the middle of heart surgery either."

Jesse McCree should be getting hell from him for that logic. His own burning is too fresh. He finds he doesn't want to fight. "You are not a surgeon, _vaquero_."

"Yeah. I'm right anyway."

There's a lot he wants. It's not right, it's not time. The wound is too recent.

Jesse goes to sleep eventually, curled in his arm. Reyes waits until the fire burns down, and then hauls them inside.

He was expecting not to sleep, but it is rich and dreamless.

**

The inside of the house is small, wooden, and homelike. There's yarn wall hangings and small sheepskin rugs. The living room is the largest room of the house. It's got an empty hearth, a big gray couch, and McCree's damned ugly wooden lamp on an end table.

It also has a man eating toast and a small, brown tabby.

"Your damn cat is staring at me. Only you would adopt an asshole barn cat."

"It's because you're eating toast. It can't figure out if it wants toast or not."

 _Mrrp!_ The cat dives after a crumb (accident, Reyes is not encouraging the damn thing,) and crunches it. It wants toast. Reyes keeps an eye on it. The fuzzy bastard likes him, it dropped a half-eaten bat outside his door yesterday. Gabriel stepped on it. "Was that the gorilla?" Reyes calls.  In English. The house is soundproof and off limits, but he's always a little cautious of one of the men deciding he wants a glass of water, or something.

There's a silence. "Yeah."

Gabriel gets up, walks over, and leans in the doorway. "You going on a mission?"

"Not yet."

"Jesse-"

"No. Not yet. They didn't have a need for me, but they wanted to be sure there was backup to train if Ana has to drop out of sight chasin' Widowmaker."

To train. Gabriel thinks about it. He knows they could use him. Morrison's had decades of leadership practice, but Reyes has more skill at putting a disparate group into a cohesive fighting unit. Only, about half of the disparate group dreads and fears him. Genji suspects him, Ana must have reservations, and they would probably stop him from training some people (Lucio jumps to mind.) So... no, they could not use him.

 "What's that face about?"

"I think you should go."

Jesse doesn't misunderstand. "It's harder to move us around than it was. I'm not goin' until there's a clear need an' they've got a room for me, or I could end up movin' a lot of attention after us, either way."

Reyes nods. Reaper caught more than one Overwatch agent by watching the attention of the local government. Jack had kept his small group hidden while charging around the globe, but they had both known he couldn't do it forever.

"You think she could come back?" Jesse asks abruptly.

"I don't know," Gabriel says. "She's been under for a lot longer than I have. She'll know what she did. Hell, if she's lucky, they'll end up wiping a lot of her memory while they're trying to get her personality out from under their blocks." He can hear his voice getting an edge. "What kind of trade is it to have to give your memory up, just for something to be okay?" His teeth click as he shuts himself up. It's Jesse's call. If Jesse doesn't want to carry the shit Reaper put on him, he doesn't have to.

"Good question." Apparently Jesse doesn't feel criticized. "It's her memories. Course, I don't know what it's like to have 'em taken away, I just know what it's like to let 'em die out of sight." He thinks about that. "Would you?"

"You've thought about what happens if Jack gets vaporized? If something bad happens on official Overwatch business, and the mist decides to come back instead of rebuilding?"

"I get nightmares."

"So do I. I want you to have time to get Winston. I want you to have time to get out. I want you to know I'm going to hold out, as long as I can. So no. If I could forget, I wouldn't."

Jesse nods. Crosses over, takes his wrist, tugs him to the soft gray couch. They settle on it together, all tangled arms, even breathing. Just comfort. The cat comes and headbutts Gabriel's hair. Gabriel ignores it. Jesse rubs its head to start it purring.

"She killed her lover," Gabriel says finally, when the cat has curled up on their thighs together and is asleep. "I'm not sure anyone should pull her back into that one. Angela probably would, to save her."

"You lost me," Jesse says evenly.

"I know." He remembers realizing it in cold and shadow, lit by a blue star, a world away. Fuck Portugal. "Alive's alive."

There's a knock on the door. Jesse jolts, realizing how bright the room's gotten. The _gauchos_ would have started tending to business, but there's things they won't do without Jesse or Gabriel there. The cat jumps up. "Shit! What time is it?"  

Gabriel lets the new replace the old.

**

Something is not right.

Gabriel acknowledges it every time he wakes up alone.

**

Jesse remembers something. He knows, because Jesse just flinched. Gabriel holds perfectly still, hand still out with the pitchfork. Jesse lets out a slow breath, standing.  

"Sorry."

"Just startled." Jesse brushes hay off his poncho. A horse snorts in the dim light. Jesse takes the pitchfork, puts it with the others, and looks around.  "Guess we're done."

Gabriel nods, looking around. They're done. Jesse went out on work and came back richer, smelling like gunsmoke. Gabriel held things together while he was gone. The barn hadn't needed that much.

 _"You're awful quiet.”_ Jesse's Spanish is shifting, his accent changing to match the region. Gabriel's not sure he likes it. There's power in adaptability. But Gabriel's let go of so much he's being damned choosy about what he loses next.

"I should have gone along," he says, in English. "You were only planning it two days. Little job."

"Something I could handle alone," Jesse says. "Ain't seen you so much as shoot a target since we got here, anyway."

"I can back you up," he says with more heat than he thought he'd have. "I can cover you."

"Good. Wait until I need it." Jesse sounds a little pissed. "C'mon, I can handle a little job or two." That's not what it's about. Gabriel thinks about it.  Jesse knows he wasn't really worried; after Blackwatch, McCree proved he was careful what he'd get into.  

Oh.

"Not trying to run you."

"I know." But the line of McCree's mouth just eased. Gabriel reaches up and touches it. Jesse puts his hand over it, holding his hand there. When Gabriel tugs back, he doesn't let go. "Ain't made of glass," he says. His tone is just that tiny bit teasing. "You don't have to be so damn cautious all the time." His eyes shine in the lamplight.

"I don't want it to go back just like it was. You don't, either." He hesitates. "What do you want?"

"It can't," Jesse says simply, and he's right. Everything that was, their safety, their order, what held them together, is all in pieces. They're still in it, together. But Gabriel hasn't moved forward because he doesn't see how to get where he wants. "I don't want to come first just because you ain't got anythin' else." That was brutal, for Jesse, and he hears his breath suck in. Jesse's mouth flattens. "Yeah, I didn't mean it like that."

"You did." He stays calm. Zenyatta's hit him with things that are just as surprising, just as true. "You've never been off my mind. Not for years. I mixed you in with every plan." Jesse nods. Gabriel knows that's what he's talking about. "Jesse," he says. "I have caches all over the fucking globe. Stashes. Money hidden away. I don't have the team, but if I wanted I could be out there, putting one together. I don't want to."

"You still catching your breath?"

"Yeah." Jesse's right, Reaper was him broken, and he's not his old self. For the first time, he thinks he might not ever be again. Which is terrifying, and freeing. "But I'm not going until you tell me to."

Jesse kisses him.

The conversation up until that point has been so devastatingly un-sexy it takes Gabriel a moment to switch gears. _Jesse._ Smell of sun. Tobacco. Sweat. Some horse; Gabriel thinks he should probably get used to that. Body heat, little tremble to him. Something tightly wound in Gabriel eases. He relaxes.  Slides his hand up and hooks it into the back of the... wierd sash thing Jesse's wearing around his hips, what in hell _is_ that outfit. Skin whole. Breathing. Standing. All of this shared.

"Better?" Jesse asks.

Gabriel nods. He didn't do it. But he did. But there's a little animal comfort, a little basic, primal okay-ness, with just standing together like they should. He doesn't want to let go.

"You okay?" Jesse's slowed the hell down. Gabriel can tell just by the caution that Jesse's going to push it.

He nods. Kisses Jesse. (How had he found Jesse's body unfamiliar? It's like coming home.) "How are you okay?" He wants to know. They're pushing it. Maybe too far.

"'Cause we all got together an' saved the damn day. As usual." Oh good. The smirk is back. He's missed it. The smirk fades. "What's that look for?"  

 "You did."

Jesse lets Gabriel take his weight. "I told you," he says, "I ain't scared of you."

"I am."

Jesse nods like it isn't surprising. "Come on," he says. "It's gettin' dark, an' I ain't sleepin' in the barn."

Gabriel walks with him silently. Their shadows appear and disappear as automatic lights cut off behind them and come on ahead. He can't help watching the edges, making sure they're not bleeding.

The door opens onto familiar, old-fashioned, safe. Gabriel steps in. Jesse takes Gabriel's hat from his hand and hangs it. He pulls Gabriel's head to a better angle, and kisses him. Gabriel wants him, as much as always, as much as ever. He puts his palms on the wall behind him.

"We goin' too far?"

"No."

Jesse's fingers find his belt. Unclasp. Long draw around his waist, and it's loose in Jesse's hand. Gabriel hears him toss the end up and catch it. He can feel a smile tug on his lips. Turns his head to check Jesse's hand. "Where are you going with that?"  

"You're lettin' me drive? Good." Jesse's tone drops. "You need me to stop, just say-"

 _Jesse._ "Do whatever you want."

"Back up." McCree moves with him to the couch, then shoves him. He doesn't bend. Gabriel can let go or drag him down, and since Jesse wants to stand, he lets go. Thanks to that, he lands more heavily than he expected. The couch skids. The cat takes off from the back of the couch, paws dotting off Gabriel's chest.

Gabriel turns his head as it indignantly bounces through the door. "Nice work, scaring your cat."

"You're gonna send it under the bed in about five minutes." Gabriel snorts. There's a crazy kind of relief in his chest. He usually has all kinds of plans. Right now, he's let go. "You think you can control yourself an' not snap your belt if I tie your wrists?"

"Do I _think_? Have you met me?"

"Then I'll hold you to that." He runs his hands up Gabriel's arms, shoving his wrists to either side of something - is that a lamp? "You better not pull too hard on 'em, either. I like this lamp." He pushes Gabriel's shirt up. Unsnaps his jeans.

Gabriel watches him. He's had enough of remembering Jesse whispering in the dark, held on his chest. He's haunted by it, by the corruption of what they had. If it puts them both far past the pit, he wants it. It's the only reason, but he still wants it. "You going to fuck me, McCree?"

Jesse glances at his face. Whatever he sees, there's a little headshake. "Think about it sometimes," he says. "Don't know if you'd like it." That damn blouse comes off in a swoop. Jesse tosses it on the table.

"We should talk about that, sometime," Gabriel suggests. Jesse's right, it's not what he wants right now, but the idea of Jesse thinking about it...

"Yeah." The sash winds loose under his hands, one end falling on the floor. Jesse glances from it to his wrists. But the belt is a token (a goddamn lamp? seriously? Gabriel is _much_ better at this, and in any other circumstance, he'd point this out) and Jesse decides not to make it any more solid.

Jesse stares back at him. Climbs down on him. Kisses him like something's broken loose. Gabriel lets him, tries to just let Jesse do what he wants; it's a test of his patience but the lamplight is so much better than the mist in the back of his head. Jesse makes a little grumbling noise, shedding his boots with loud clomping noises. Sliding off his loose pants. Leans up to dig in a drawer by the little couch, and it occurs to Gabriel to wonder how long Jesse's been waiting. A tube lands on the cushion by his elbow, bounces against his arm. Jesse straddles him.

But they're pushing it, and Jesse slows, resting his weight into Gabriel while he looks him in the face. He's real, heavy, with an ease to his muscles that says he's happy where he is. Just that makes Gabriel feel like he's armored. Jesse strokes Gabriel's lip with two fingers. Gabriel sucks them in his mouth. A smile softens Jesse's face. He sits up, pulling his hand back, running it down his chest. A little sigh comes through his lips. Gabriel didn't think he moved, but the lampshade just jerked, sending an erratic ring of shade jumping over them.

"Careful, now. Last thing I need is you smashin' yourself in the face." Jesse looks good to him. Almost entirely naked.

Almost. He watches Jesse's skin, no signs of anything dark locked away in his body. Watches his ribs move as he breathes. Watches his neck curve. Watches his gaze go to the lube. His voice is rough, still human, although the slight rasp in his voice throws him off for a moment. "McCree. Take your damn hat off."

Jesse doesn't seem to notice the sound. Jesse's grin down at his face is wolfish. "Hell, no. You're lucky I took off my boots."

**

The damn hat is half on his face.

Gabriel has snatched a few minutes to nap. But it was a light, jumpy sleep, and he snapped awake again. He's afraid of his dreams with Jesse draped over him. McCree is one hell of an exorcist, but...

Reaper had craved this so terribly. Reaper had lain them like this, skin bared as much as he could stand, Jesse draped like a blanket, head tucked against his mask. Jesse must remember it. Jesse just sleeps, unafraid. Gabriel hasn't felt like this before in his life. Raw, like he'd just been talking to Zenyatta for hours. And all right.   

McCree is dead to the world, head turned to one side on his chest. Gabriel's pretty sure he's starting to drool. He restrains his complaint and shifts instead, one shoulder climbing the back of the couch, so McCree's mouth is more angled up. Smug bastard. Gabriel still has loops of belt around one wrist. It's loose enough to not echo the feel of his gauntlet. He leaves it.

Eventually McCree will wake up, since it's pretty damned drafty. Gabriel was able to work his datapad free and set the house lights low, so Jesse won't wake up on his chest in the dark. He'll know where he is.

When he gets Jesse a new lamp, he'll pick up a blanket for the back of the couch. Whatever Jesse wants. Jesse can look at Gabriel, listen to him, and not hear Reaper. He's seen Gabriel at his worst, after Jack had killed him, after Mercy had damned him, after he'd rotted in pain and in darkness. He's survived him. And later, he pulled him in. Gabriel wonders how he'd handle Jesse at his worst. Keep him too close to hurt anyone, he supposes, chained to his wrist, if he were driven out of his mind like that.

Reaper would have done terrible things for Jesse to love him like this. Gabriel was given it. He doesn't understand. But McCree is safe, and McCree is content, and even though his ankle itches, Gabriel isn't moving. He watches Jesse's mouth, looking for so much as a hint of reddish light. There's nothing but sleep-slacked lips.

He always thought he was the stronger one. He never doubted it. But if he were Jesse, he doesn't think he'd be forgiven. He doesn't think he sees how.

He kisses the top of Jesse's head. Movement, he glances: the cat is peering around the doorway, suspicious.

Gently, Jesse McCree starts to snore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically there's another chapter; but holy damn, y'all. I'll think about this.


	18. A Walk Through the Surf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once you've been in the depths, you never forget the mysteries of the sea; you never forget what was taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music? Delta Rae: I Will Never Die.

A spike of cold in the chest. It's like Mei shot him with her damn icicle gun. Gabriel drops the board off the fence. Wires sing and snare as it falls on them. A _gaucho_ gives him a long, reproachful look.

"Sorry." He follows the trail of cursing to Jesse. Jesse's got less of it, he's weaker in his recovery from nasty little moments like that. Gabriel reflects. Probably a bullet through the heart. Maybe a spear. Perhaps a big chunk of shrapnel, or a fall on broken glass. Jack? Mercy?

A message: _Yes?_

Not long later, quick enough to tell him the situation was resolved, an answer: _Assassin. Sorry._

In return: _Be more careful._

**

It was just a little job. Fine to take solo. And then fucking _Sombra._ Talon's gotten tired of his still being around.

"Enough, you fucking cockroach," says Sombra, all aggravated disbelief at not having killed him yet.  Jesse looks up. He's in a giant engine on the bottom level of a robotics factory. The engine was partly taken apart for maintenance and a safety grille put in to keep the pistons from falling into the workspace below. He'd need two other people's help to reach around one of them. Down below is the safety grille. Its squares are just barely too close together for him to drop and escape through. It's much too heavy for him to break. Too heavy for him to weaken with a pistol shot, even if his newest Peacekeeper weren't glinting up at him from the floor, far below.

He's going to hit the metal and get crushed through it. Fucking awful way to go -  fuck Sombra.

Sombra has recovered. "Greet the Reaper for me," Sombra adds politely, throws a lever to start the engine, and shoots the ledge out from under his feet.

There's no thought in his head. There's just observation: pitch, fall, air rushing, engine starting to roar.

He closes his eyes. Everything goes cold and dark.

The _whack_ of impact just about kills him.

Just about. He's still alive. There's a lot of jarring impacts shaking him to the bone, but nothing has crushed him yet.  He opens his eyes. He rolls over. The metal grille is over his head, bright, clean, solid. The pistons hit it again as he watches.

Sombra's going to check. Sombra's going to observe, at some point, that he was not killed by that. Sombra will probably _react fucking faster than this he has to move_. Jesse scrapes himself up to his hands and feet. It's agonizing, but he can do it. He's leaving behind little blood smears, and he thinks he broke his cheekbone, but that doesn't matter right now. He starts crawling.

Later, Winston tells him that the scanner in his head stopped working for about three-quarters of a second. Like it had just blipped out of existing.

**

Jack sits quietly. The lights are off; he doesn't want to wake anyone up in this shitty little place. The kitchen is tiny. D.Va was supposed to do the dishes, but she was wiped out. They'll be there in the morning. Meanwhile, there's no clean spoons. Jack is about to go digging through drawers, but for quiet's sake, he resigns himself to powdery balls of drink mix in his cup and settles down into his chair.

He can still feel a spidering cold in his veins when he thinks about it. He tries not to. It's saved his life, pulled him back from injuries that he knew would have finished him off. And it's been feeding on him, he knows, steadily balancing the books, taking back everything it gives. He sips. Grimaces.

He hates it.

Well. He has more to think about. Winston's been busy trying to help Mercy come up with neural repair technology on a more refined scale, meant to undo precisely done damage. There's a little ringing, clinking noise in the darkness as he stirs his drink. He doesn't know if that's going to work or not. He drinks.

He thinks for long minutes, reliving the recent past. They had a test run on one of Talon's recent captures (not an Overwatch agent - well, he is now) that Talon was busy appropriating when they showed up. Brigitte smashed the door down, Jack got him out, Mercy patched him up; seamless teamwork. Jack licks the last couple of drops off the back of the spoon. They were getting used to this rescue thing. The part where they had to put neural scanners on everyone that Talon had a risk of getting was a bitch, but the damn things were turning out to be treasures. Winston wouldn't talk about their readouts, but he'd given the impression Gabriel's head was looking like a better place to be. Jack's happy for him, as many little misgivings as he might still have about Argentina. McCree.

Not his business, though, if anyone could wring some happiness out of that shitty hand, they deserved it. He drops the spoon into the empty cup and sits in -

Hang on a minute.

Spoon?

He waves his hand over the cup for the handle. It's not there. He feels on the table. Nothing. He gets up and turns on the lights.

Ana comes in a few minutes later, ethereal in the brightness, squinting her eye. "What are you doing?"

Jack looks up from under the table, deeply disturbed. "Looking for a spoon."

**

 _Two years is not a long time_ he thinks. It isn't. This might have been too soon. "Too much?" he asks. He knows it wasn't, but he wants to hear it. 

"You smug asshole," Jesse says into his shoulder. A kiss is pressed against Gabriel's collarbone, between tickling streaks of sweat. Jesse's still trembling. Gabriel wraps his arms around Jesse and stands up. Jesse mutters something. Gabriel kind of has to show off his strength after that, has to show he can take care of him, so he ignores it. He carries Jesse to the bathroom, eases him into the tub, starts the water. It's about having his hands on Jesse, just making sure he's safely down again. He climbs into the tub too. He's startled when more blood than he expected clouds the water. Oh, wait, that's his. Jesse's a goddamn _wildcat_ when he's the right kind of worked up, and the joins of his mechanical hand pinch when he's careless.

"Shit." Jesse sees the blood. He reaches up for Gabriel's shoulder. Gabriel grabs his fingers. He's fine. He doesn't want Jesse concerned, he wants him sleepy and sated. "Sorry."

"Worth it."  

Right response. Jesse's smiling. His emotional barriers are shot to hell; Gabriel's going to have to be careful with him. "An' stop grinnin' like that." Gabriel grabs the washcloth, eases tears off his face. Jesse flops bonelessly on him when he pulls. Gabriel takes his weight, kissing the bridge of his nose. Jesse snorts, but there's a goofy little twist to his smile. He thought that was cute as hell, and he's in no shape to hide it. Gabriel rinses the cloth. He wipes sweat off the back of Jesse's neck, rests the hot cloth there until Jesse's neck muscles ease. Jesse breathes, the last shakes sliding out of him, skin to skin. They both needed that. It doesn't have the same joy it used to. Gabriel feels more inhibited, more cautious, and there's no way to set that aside. But it was worth it. He rests against the wall of the tub, swiping the cloth over swollen places, Jesse curled against him.

Gabriel's gaze runs over the bruises down his back, over his arms, dark and blurred under the water. He's been a long time avoiding those, but the sight feeds something in him that wanted calming, as always. It's not as good as it was once, before Reaper landed. But it's there. He touches one, very gently, to watch the edges creep closer to his finger. Jesse needs biotics for gunshots, but little things like this? The mist wipes them clean. Down to the core of him, he regrets how fast they're healing.

"Don't drown," he says. "I'll be right back." Jesse mutters agreement. Gabriel pulls down a towel on the cold bathtub edge and drapes Jesse's shoulders over it.

In the bedroom, he strips the bed, tosses the sheets in the laundry (if he doesn't wash those in the morning they're not going to get the blood out, he'd better not forget) and remakes the bed. Goes to get Jesse.

Jesse's three-quarters asleep, which Gabriel was expecting.

He hasn't healed any more, which Gabriel wasn't.

Gabriel slides into the water again. Jesse murmurs something and clutches him sleepily. Gabriel rolls him into his arms. Shit. What's going on? Did the mist stuff decide to just quit on the job? Did Winston do something, shut it down from a distance? Is something wrong in Jesse's body, and priority is on healing that? "You hurt?"

"Quit fussin'." It's softened by Jesse's smile. So no, he's fine. He's content, exhausted, everything Gabriel was aiming for, Gabriel doesn't want to ruin it for him. So he hides his anxiety. But he wraps Jesse in his arms, looking at the marks. They stand out like guilt. He wants them gone.  

They fade as he watches, like water droplets off a hot gunbarrel. Jesse shivers convulsively, now wide awake. He grabs Gabriel, hooking a knee under his underwater. "Woah." He looks down at his chest. "Sure got fed up with my shit fast."

"Bed." Gabriel lifts them both out of the tub, dries them off quickly, and puts Jesse on the sheets. Jesse won't take his arms from around Gabriel's neck, still awake enough to be stubborn. Gabriel lies over his chest.

He'd divided that shit in his own head, labeled it "his" and "mine" even though when one of them nearly dies, they all know it. The mist is still attuned to his desires. It still likes him more. _Don't hurt him. Don't let me hurt him. Just do what he wants. Just stay in there and keep him safe._ It's a prayer.

When he wakes up, Jesse is patiently trying to slip out from under him without waking him up. He's bracketing himself over Jesse like he can shield him with his body, like the problem isn't hiding beneath their skins.

Gabriel makes him breakfast.

Then he sends Winston a message: _Progress?_

Then he does the laundry.

The response: _No._

**

"Honey, hand me the pen."

"I don't have a pen."

"You just wrote somethin' on the list." Jesse waves the list.

Gabriel feels his pockets. He reaches to the shelf in front of him, pushing things around. There is a  _prrp!_ from the shelf. He pauses to scratch the cat's ears, then tosses the pen he found. "Here." 

"Thanks. You know, you only like that cat 'cause it pissed on my hat." 

"That's the only reason to like a cat." Gabriel goes back to ignoring the cat. 

"Anyway, this one's blue and the ink's black."

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "I don't have a pen." Who cares? Pens drift everywhere. 

**

"You look like you haven't been sleeping well."

Mercy shrugs. "The raid was miserable." Everything went off without a hitch. They exposed one of Talon's hidden medical sites. Allies and associates are still being arrested. They stole procedural data. Mercy isn't talking about the theft itself; she's talking about her review of the records. "The dreams are back."

He snorts. "Yeah, they're never far off. I've noticed there's this dark woman-shape-thing in the back of my dreams. Like my mind just can't let-" She just went white as milk. He puts a hand under her elbow. "Mercy?"

"Sorry," she says. She steps away, waving her wrist in front of a sealed box and getting out a bottle. She takes two pills, dry. "I just need some sleep." She puts the bottle down and walks out.

He checks the label, and slowly puts them away for her.

_Gabriel, do you see a weird shadow figure in your dreams all the time?_

_Yes. Don't ask him, he has nightmares for a week when he thinks about it._

_He sees it._

_Yes._

Jack doesn't punch anything. He'd break a knuckle, in this mood. Maybe Gabriel would know. They've got the most of it, and things that Jesse and Mercy miss still reverberate between them. 

**

The wind's tearing at his face, trying to rip his body off the back of the shuttle. Gabriel swings his shotgun level. His enemy raises a helpless hand. Not surrender; desperation. Gabriel grabs the handholds and kicks. The impact knocks the soldier into freefall. He'll probably die hitting the water, or drown, but he was begging for a chance and he got one. Gabriel spits after him, putting the gun away. Cold's thrumming across his side in little crackles.

"Problem?" Jack's voice asks.

"Widowmaker venom." He crosses the spine of the shuttle. One more enemy is there, aiming up at him already. The shot goes wide with the help of the wind. But this time, the shotgun roars. The man's armor can't stand it at this range. He's gone. Gabriel puts the gun away, opens the hatch, and slides in.  

Jesse and Mercy are both shaking one hand irritably, as if trying to throw something off it. Jesse is getting Widowmaker's damn visor-helmet-thing off. He flexes his arm, trying to encourage blood to flow so it will heal, already. He can see at a glance that they were successful. Jesse's bleeding, but since Gabriel can name the sources of all the cold he's feeling, it's not bad enough to make the mist work.

"How are you back there?" Zarya has been learning to fly from Tracer. Her piloting is better than Jack's.

"Good." Their first clue that Widowmaker is awake is her attempt to put her high heel through McCree's eye socket. Gabriel throws himself down on her. "Dammit, Mercy!"

"Sorry." Mercy does what she should have done the first time she saw a centimeter of Widowmaker's flesh, and sinks a needle. "She's immune to some of these. I couldn't get the scanner on her head."

Gabriel doesn't want excuses, and ignores her until the scanner's up and running and showing Widowmaker completely unconscious. "How's our path out?"

"Wide open," says Jack. "Their missiles are taken care of. Now we just have to get home before the squall lands."

They fly back in triumph. Widowmaker is light in his arms when he steps off the shuttle. Tracer is by his side in an instant. Her hug is indiscriminate on both his arms, and his armfuls. Her face is too confused to be hopeful; she knows how difficult this will be.

"Perhaps it would be best to address the changes to her physiology early," Mercy says, looking at her initial readouts as she gets off the shuttle. "I am not sure of how much they influence her psychological state."

"You get Amélie back in there, and let her choose what she wants fixed." Gabriel carries her towards the infirmary. Jack steps off his plane and walks towards them.

"Nice work, everyone." He hugs Zarya, claps Mercy on the back. "Rocking the flannel, Gabe."

Gabriel hands over Talon's top assassin. He can feel himself flush. Jesse got him black and white checks as the only concession. "Shut up. It's a work shirt. You tag us in with that little notice, you're lucky I'm not in my bathrobe." He looks around. McCree's gone already. "Everyone: we did good." He flips the shotgun over and holds it out to Zarya. "You mind?" She shakes her head, taking it. She's back to the armory anyway to get her cannon. Gabriel steps back, so Jack can take Widowmaker to Mercy's waiting gear.

He does not envy Amélie.

Jesse's not on the landing strip, or the landing platform, but there's a steady wind rising in the air and he knows where Jesse's gone. He climbs up to the highest point of rock. Jesse's sitting, watching a black line of clouds grow on the horizon. Gabriel smells salt and trouble.

"Going to get us fried by lightning," he says, knocking McCree's hat off (there's a cord on it, it just slides down his back and hangs) and running his fingers into his hair.

"Go inside, if you're scared of a little cloud." Jesse leans back on his knees. Gabriel settles down against the rocks and pulls Jesse into his lap.

"Never been hit by lightning before. Maybe we'll like it."

Jesse reaches back and hooks his hand around Gabriel's neck. They watch the black line of clouds thicken, darken. They roll and billow closer. In the sea below them, the waves start to trouble and foam. Jesse lifts his hands into the air. Thunder booms over the wind. Gabriel leans back, head up, as a line of shadow cuts over the sun. He can hear the hiss of the first raindrops splattering on the rocks.

Jesse's breathless laugh is his last warning before drops are drumming all around them, throwing flecks of white back up from the impact. They pound on his skull until he steals Jesse's hat. The wind tries to tear it away like it's tearing Jesse's jubiliant whoop. Gabriel holds Jesse still, since his chest and legs are still dry although his arms and back are soaking fast.

Jesse rolls in his arms. The wind tears away the hat and carries it off in triumph. Jesse kisses Gabriel, deep.


	19. Author's Note, and Thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SUMMARY: THANK YOU. 
> 
> Also thoughts on writing and my reasoning for some of it, if you were wondering.

Thank you.

This thing would probably be a seed crystal on my computer if I hadn't posted it. Storytelling requires an audience. I probably would have let it just drift in my subconscious, but...

When I write, it's usually, uhm, a bit more peaceful.

Sometimes there's a cracking underfoot and I can't stop, frantic, half compelled, trying to get out from under something huge. (These fics have served their purpose, too; everyone's life has upheavals and unpleasantness. I've come back from one thing and walked into another. I needed to show myself I could do this. I've needed this to have when I woke up at two and couldn't sleep. Don't think I'm a tortured artist! I'm a spoiled one.)

What happened was simple:  I noticed there wasn't a lot of Jesse/Gabriel that fit, to me, where Gabriel was to blame for his actions but was also driven in a way he couldn't stop. I wrote The Calm In the Eye of Stormchaser. It's pretty much like the final version. But I looked at it, and I thought _I have to post this_ and then I thought ... _I don't think anyone will buy this._ Because there was no leadup. There was no anchor. Just a kind of "take my word for it," to a reader who's clicked and read has already done one favor. So I started looking at what I'd need to find it compelling. And...  

If there's anything I can say I know about my craft, it's: _when you start typing because something got_ dislodged _and you have to lay it all out,_ do not stop.

So I didn't. Which led to that feeling of trying to stay on top of a wave, and music recs and fanart - thank you so much.

Thank you. I wrote this, and... people got it. It's magical to have it _click_ with people just what you mean. When you get that bittersweet, restless burning in your chest, and you visit that place in your mind where it resonates, and fill both hands and hold them out... I'm entirely used to being ignored, so having people actually stop, talk to each other, think about it, resonate back... it's a gift. The idea that I've set people's headcanons is dizzying. I had a reader summarize _everything_ I was trying to do, even what I chose not to spell out, in a couple paragraphs. I knew my paradigm had shifted when I noticed there was a two-day gap in the rate of added bookmarks, and I thought _well, that chapter wasn't as good as the others. Sorry, everyone._ It still blows me away that anyone discussed any of it, ever, in a group chat. I hope Freediver held up to expectations, but that I got them high in the first place is amazing to me.

It gave back, too. I was afraid of the sequel because trying to imagine what Reaper would do to Jesse - I'd already put him through hell. But a comment about Hanzo on Stormchaser gave me my in. (And no, as an author, I wasn't really happy leaving Reaper in the fog and Jesse hanging off a cliff.)

I expected Freediver to be shorter and more flashback-heavy. I ended up deleting most of the flashbacks, it was too crushing, but I noticed they were on a spectrum of emotion. Sometimes Gabriel was trying to reach through to Jesse. Some of what I wrote mimicked consensual interaction, and I was a bit worried people would think that was what I was going for. Since consent has been huge, to the point I thought readers would trust me to respect it, that was distressing. It was cruel to the characters I'd spent so much time building, because when you get twisted intimacy like that, the violations are multifaceted and the damage is exponential. I didn't think I could write it. And at its core, it didn't feel right to be trying to sort through that mess in front of a live audience. So I simplified: we all know drugs remove consent! And coherent conversations! Everything goes in the Hazy Nope Bucket, and we move on from there. But I hope it worked as a balance between the heaviness of the subject, and my ability to handle it, and my ability to have it be something that could be read for fun (well. You know what I mean.)  

Then I ended up rewriting a couple of them. (Having Hanzo notice a clean and perfect brand, after Reyes was like "that's really cool and I hope you fix the missing part, but it's your body, so it's your call" in a couple of places, was supposed to be a kind of kicker moment that said everything that needed to be said about Reaper. But it only worked for me because I was the author, so I had to find another way.)

The possibility of Jesse forgetting things he didn't explicitly dig up... well, I worried about including that because 1. it's a little too neat 2. it would probably all come back, in time. But I kept it, because y'all made me realize that pain is damn near a writer's tool in this thing. I want to be only hurting my characters (by extension, weakly, my audience) when I have to, when I can make it pay off. Jesse's track had shifted off what I expected, in a way that I didn't want to change back, but his continued suffering didn't give the story anything. So I let it become a little elided. I am not sure how that works for the reader.

According to comments, I've caused total strangers to cry, or sit up all night. So I do think there's power in this, and I did worry how I was handling it. (I worried about cultural appropriation of _gauchos_.) I worried about how effectively I was examining consent in Stormchaser. I worried about minimizing the impact of Jesse's abduction, and I worried about the aftermath seeming diminished or dismissive to someone who's got different experiences.

Did I fuck up?

I hope not. That's a judgment call to be made by everyone, at every time, now. I do apologize to anyone that found anything didn't sit quite right. I really do.

Sometimes people have asked questions that were already answered in what I'd written next; sometimes they're things that got "oh RIGHT" and hasty keytapping. There are more questions, there are more characters whose reactions and involvements and futures I could explore... but  _this fucking thing._ I cannot, I'm burning out. I've been writing this breakneck, and once I stop, there's really no way to pick up where I left off, probably not for years, any more than I can go back to sleep and dream quite the same dream. (I'm also pretty sure the mist is what I think of as "eldritch" and banishing that shit is probably a Lovecraft crossover.) But I also can't keep writing like this forever.  

Thank you for buying into the twists, for suspending disbelief here and there for my convenience, for allowing me to toss handfuls of time out of the way. For tolerating things I could not keep myself from doing, like Drunken Hanzo Trying to Be McCree, and Evil Internet Nemesis Crimelords.

Special thanks to Argentina and Portugal. 

Thank you for reading. Thank you so much. 

 

EDIT: OH. And if you were wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pycnocline

I knew this thing was going to keep getting lighter. It was built into the work. 

We skipped Benthic. Benthic was during McCree's capture.

 

EDIT THE SECOND AS OF 3/15/17: 

I have mentioned I wrote this in a kind of mad rush, a dislodging and pouring out. Since I've had time to settle down and go over it, two things kind of ring to me as something I've read before. I believe they're my work, but it's possible I accidentally used something I've read. The first: a mention of how Zenyatta holds things like loaves of bread and drops them. It kind of reminds me of a Buffy fic I read once, but probably over a decade ago. The part where the Blackwatch and Overwatch symbols mark each other reminds me of something from Alice Munro. Since I have nothing besides a flickering memory of the first, and don't know where in her work to look for the second, I can't verify if this is a tonal echo, a paraphrase, or a direct reference. I'm not sure enough to take 'em out and would like to leave my work as it stands. However, I'm reminded enough to mention them. Please consider any similarity to these a shout out, or a nod to the effect on me, not intentional plagiarism. Writing is messy! 


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